Nemesis
by Helion
Summary: STORY COMPLETED! His first meeting with Turmoil still a basis for dreadful nightmares, T-Bone fears things couldn't possibly get worse when Hard Drive helps Turmoil to escape from Alkatraz Island… But things can get worse. Oh yes, they definitely can!
1. Part 1: Memories Stirring

TITLE:

NEMESIS - PART 1: MEMORIES STIRRING

AUTHOR:

Helion

BEGIN OF WRITING:

April 17, 2001

FINISHED WRITING:

July 21, 2001

FINAL CHECKING:

January 21, 2002

EMAIL:

helion.regret@gmx.net

RATING:

PG-13 for some violence / drama in overall story

SYNOPSIS:

His first meeting with Turmoil still a basis for dreadful nightmares, T-Bone fears things couldn't possibly get worse when Hard Drive helps Turmoil to escape from Alkatraz Island…

LEGAL NOTICE:

'SWAT Kats - The Radical Squadron' and the characters of the show are the property of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

In case you wonder, yes, this text exists in its written form for half a year now, and the whole story idea is even a year older. I've never come across a story idea that I both love and hate as intensely as this one; that's why I hesitated with posting it. So, please allow me to state some things first:   
"Nemesis" is going to be a lengthy, considerably dark six-part story in which every part will be roughly as long as this one. (Yes, the complete story will definitely hold six parts; no more, no less.)   
Should the prologue look familiar, it's because I formerly posted it under the title "Nightmare". My thanks to all of you who reviewed it.   
Many thanks also to Kristen Sharpe for her diligent efforts at wiping out the mistakes I made in my texts, and for her encouraging me to write more. I don't think she expected a story like this, though.   
My special, most humble thanks to C. L. Furlong - more than once victim of my writing - for offering me his suggestions and warnings, for sharing with me his thoughts and fears on my works. Thank you, my friend.   
And, last but not least, my thanks to non-existing but ever-present Mary Sue for giving me the idea to this fic all along.   
Of course, all mistakes in this text are mine, not theirs! Do let me know about your comments, please. No writer can evaluate the effect a story has on the reader without feedback.   
And now, here's the story. Expect the unexpected!

  


* * *

PROLOGUE

Clank. Clank.

The reverberating sounds of his boots on the iron grids and base plates made him purr. It sounded great. Powerful. It described *him*.

T-Bone wasn't running; he was striding peacefully, more intent on displaying authority than on making haste. Yet, the corridor around him seemed to rush by. Never-ending walls forcing him to walk straight ahead the one moment shifted for crossings with four, six or eight corridors meeting in the next. He maintained his pace; in fact, he had no control over it, but that was something he didn't grasp. Speed wasn't necessary here.

The world shifted again, and the crossing was replaced by another corridor, similar to all the others. Alien. Deserted.

No, there was a difference. So slight it wasn't detectable at first. The light. It was brighter here, the pipes and cables on the walls shining with colors they could never take on in real life. Standard colors were swallowed by various shades he couldn't place, mixings of the primary colors so vivid it made him anxious. As if on command, the colors changed back to the TurboKat's red and blue he liked so much, switched mostly back to black and gray thereafter.

It was definitely getting brighter. That was something he could grasp; it meant he was nearing the aircraft's outer hull. He was nearing his destination.

Actually, the ship's outer hull was windowless. Even flying in the most wonderful sky, the light illuminating the corridors came from artificial lights, a constant intensity that flooded the whole ship. It *couldn't* get brighter. But, if T-Bone thought of the hull as window-framed, well then it was window-framed, and the first glass fields appeared at the walls, letting in the beauty of an azure sky.

Clank. Clank.

A phenomenal sound. T-Bone looked down to investigate the boots that caused such a mighty resonance. Their black outlines merged into his same-colored uniform perfectly. Moreover, they were spotless, shining a grand black for the sun to envy.

_Black is caused by a surface that absorbs all the particles of the light. The boots can't shine themselves._

The thought was totally out-of-the-blue, and it caused the world to waver. More thoughts emerged like a bubble of reason.

_This is a dream. I am dreaming._

Before the thoughts could lead to salvation, however, they were tugged away, stored in Chance's subconscious to come back in the real world on wakening. His name was gone as well. Chance was winked out of existence, and so was T-Bone. Only one name could describe him now: Flight Commander.

Clank.

His boots still made the only sounds on the ship, but he wasn't alone any longer. Another pair of black boots walked beside him, *floated* beside him with a grace as unnatural as the rest of Chance's dream. He looked up and to the side, staring at Turmoil's beautiful face. She fixed her eyes on his, smiled down at him. The Flight Commander smiled back and Turmoil vanished.

This wasn't about her. This dream was about him.

The corridor ended not from shifting this time, but from walking. In front, it connected with two other ones in a T, the corridor he had taken ending with a great airlock directly ahead. Not exactly as it has been in truth, but his whirled memories made it real.

He waited silently at the bend, arms crossed behind his back. For the first time, steps other than his own echoed through the ship, though they sounded muted, uneven. The footsteps of a kat on the run. A figure stumbled around the corner, and the Flight Commander let his voice boom out, daunting his vis-à-vis to stop dead in his track.

"You've made a big mistake coming here, Jake!"

The slender, caramel tomkat had to straighten to meet his eyes. He was so small; the mechanics coveralls he was wearing too large, as if their wearer had shrunk, and not the other way around. It was colored like a SWAT Kat's uniform, but, if it was meant to be a disguise, it made a poor job of it, helmet and mask absent.

Jake shivered visibly; nonetheless, he found the bravado to address him. It galled the Flight Commander.

"T-Bone. What… what's going on? And, what's with the outfit?"

"It's the uniform of the Flight Commander." 

"T-Bone, you can't be serious. Let's…"

He _tsk_ed, and Jake became mute. "It's Flight Commander. And, I won't let you ruin the best opportunity of my life."

The airlock opened on a silent command. Jake didn't try to flee. There was no possibility of escaping his strong arms, anyway. He grabbed Jake's uniform at the neck, forced him toward the airlock easily. The wind was pressing against the opening, howling through the ship. *Mourning*.

"T-Bone, what are you doing?"

"Keeping your life short enough to get a grip on this unique chance."

Directly at the airlock, the Flight Commander had an exceptional view of MegaKat City beneath, a city that had once shattered his life. He had tried to protect it, and they had destroyed it as a reward. They would see who had the last laugh.

Limp in his grip, Jake was defeated. He looked at his captor with a sadness that would have killed him in real life. His last resistance was ripped from some other memory of T-Bone, without hope of touching the kat beneath the Flight Commander uniform.

"Sorry, buddy. You're just not yourself."

The Flight Commander grinned sardonically. "Consider our partnership DISSOLVED." 

Jake walked the plank with a hard kick to his butt.

His former partner fell like a stone, flailing his arms about in desperate helplessness. "Chaaaaaanceeeeee!" he screamed on his way down.

The Flight Commander watched the form getting smaller and smaller, but his thoughts were somewhere else.

_You're just not yourself._

_Not yourself._

_I'm the Flight Commander,_ he fought back.

_Not yourself._

_I am… - …not yourself._

He had lost sight of Jake's form. It was so tiny now, so close to the ground, that he had no way to know where he could find him again.

_I… That's not me. It can't be me! I am…_

_Not yourself._

_I am … CHANCE!_

***

Chance woke with a start, his heart rattling like a machine gun. The darkness of his room didn't soothe him.

"Nooooooooooooooo…!"

Under the protection of his blanket, the big tabby started to sob.

* * *

NEMESIS - PART 1: MEMORIES STIRRING

* * *

"This puny prison won't keep us apart, T-Bone."

-- Turmoil in _Cry Turmoil_

* * *

"Bad is never good until worse happens."

-- _Danish Proverb_

* * *

WEDNESDAY, 8:15 A.M.

A white ray of pure energy raced across his vision, engulfed everything he saw and swallowed it as a black hole swallows the light.

He noticed himself stumbling, falling, sliding off the TurboKat's wing with the electric welder in his grip being a last, yet deadly sheet anchor and then he lost this grip too, as the power he had conjured took him off the jet. Blinded, he didn't know where the forces pulled him to, but the impact on the wall told him his position with surgical precision.

The wind was knocked out of him, and black spots danced mockingly on the white background that was his field of vision.

Well, any color besides white was an improvement. He hoped.

Chance lay motionless at the base of the wall, stunned, waiting for his sight to focus. Maybe he should feel lucky to still be alive, but somehow that thought didn't cheer him.

It was a streak of bad luck that was haunting him the whole morning, undeniably the progeny of his gruesome nightmare that still sent shivers down his spine.

Firstly, after his shower, he had slipped on the wet bathroom floor. His head still had the bump to prove that a sink wouldn't move an inch in a game of chicken.

Secondly, in the kitchen his glee to get the last can of milk turned to gloom as he spat out the first swallow of the sour content.

To top it all off, thirdly, he had almost electrocuted himself with the welder only a moment ago. If he hadn't lost the hold on it he would have for sure.

No doubt disaster number four was already underway.

The day was going to annoy him.

Someone was climbing down the ladder, Chance realized, and craned his neck to look in that direction. His sight returned slowly; he could make out the blurred features of his comrade, Jake, standing by the stairs.

"Didn't we agree to repair the TurboKat together?"

Jake's words triggered his guilt. They *had* agreed on that point.

Yesterday evening, a test flight with the TurboKat showed that the jet had difficulties in holding a stable course. The TurboKat tended to draw to the left whenever the joystick was in its neutral position. It could either be a problem with the stabilizers or a tear in a wing, so they decided to work on it today - together.

Yet, even without a dream to haunt him, Jake had woken earlier than Chance and left a note on the kitchen table that said he was in the salvage yard hunting for spare parts, while Chance needed something to get his mind off his bad luck, off his nightmare. He'd begun alone and found the problem fast: a loose metal in the left wing, hidden between layers of wiring, bolts and steel cables, that needed to be welded.

Still, he had broken the promise, and he felt miserable about it, especially today.

"Sorry, buddy. I just… sorry."

Jake sighed. "Well, did you find the problem?"

From his words, Chance could sense that Jake was still disappointed. "Yep," here he finally had to grin, "the hard way! I won't do anything single-handedly on the TurboKat again. I promise!" he held up his hand to emphasize the point. "I've already lost five of my nine lives today."

"OK. I truly hope you're *not* promising because you've banged your head on that wall and now talk out of a delirium."

Chance shook his head and stood up, his sight almost back to normal. "Nope. I mean it." The next question popped up out of nowhere. "Jake, why are you back already? Have you found something of interest in the yard?"

"It's the Enforcers. They've mobilized an armada of choppers and are sending them in the direction of MegaKat City bay. I think we better watch the news. There's big trouble going on."

"I'm coming!" _Terrific, there's today's disaster no. 4,_ thought Chance pessimistically. He jumped into the TurboKat's cockpit and let his gaze sweep over the instruments. He found that two warning lamps had turned a nasty red.

_Great… So much for my repair job! With my run of bad luck, whatever is occupying the Enforcers can only be my archenemy._

Silently cursing his misfortune, Chance shut down the jet's power and jumped out. He climbed the ladder, grabbed a can with a soft drink in the kitchen, and followed Jake to the living room.

He didn't know just how prophetic his words had been.

  


WEDNESDAY, 8:23 A.M.

Jake turned the TV on, then zapped through the channels until the familiar face of reporter Ann Gora appeared on the screen, rocking from side to side. Ann and her camerakat, Johnny, were filming out of a helicopter, and she had to shout over the noise.

"This is Ann Gora, Kats Eye News, live from mid-air over MegaKat City bay, where most dramatic events have taken place during the last hours of tonight."

The camera panned slowly to the helicopter's window and zoomed in on the landscape outside. Infinite waves, built up high by lashing winds, made up most of the picture. Some small strips of mainland could also be seen, like barriers to the left and right, barriers that fueled the swells' strength as the land on both sides of the bay kept coming closer toward the other, until it united in the distant background.

A tiny island was the center of attraction for Johnny. Situated far away from either coast of the mainland, it was at the mercy of the waves that persistently crashed onto its shore. But, it wasn't the waves that made this island special for the news, they were just one of the reasons for the island to become what it was.

Black fog rose from the remains of one side of the building on the island, obscuring the view of the fires beneath. A contingent of firefighters kept the flames at bay as well as extinguished the last sources of fire while another contingent of Enforcers secured and brought order to the area. Dozens of choppers were crisscrossing over the waters, probing every single spot with searchlights.

Chance recognized the island a split-second before Ann Gora continued her voice-over and the can in his hand began to slip as he broke out in a sweat.

"Alkatraz Island, the most secure prison in the world. Not a single prisoner has ever escaped the solitude of the two-centuries-old cells and found a way to conquer the sea and its tricky tide alive. Even Mac and Molly Mange, the only escapees so far, lost their biological bodies in their famous getaway. That they would arise from their corpses, like a phoenix from the ashes, to become the dreaded Metallikats, was pure chance.

But, every story ends. This night marks the end to the fame of 'invincible' Alkatraz Island. With help from outside, and a plan as daring as successful, 19 inmates have escaped their lifetime residence.

Although the Enforcers are tight on news, Kats Eye News has managed to get information on this group of prisoners.

It's Turmoil, with her most loyal crew."

Miles away from where Ann Gora was sending her report, a soft drink fell from a golden-furred hand to the carpet on the floor.

"As I said, the Enforcers are tight on news. Every question we asked concerning the accomplice has been turned down with the standard 'No comment!' phrase. But, the citizens of MegaKat City have the right to be informed about the danger they face, and Kats Eye News is not the news channel with the highest ratings because we back up. So, to inform the public, we have searched for an eyewitness report of the breakout. You will see it exclusively here and now."

***

The picture faded to black; the sounds the helicopter made vanished simultaneously. One moment later, an image returned, the grainy picture of an amateur's videotape.

It showed the beach promenade, beautifully bathed in the first rays of sunlight at early morning, with Alkatraz Island barely visible in the far waters and unmistakably out of focus. For the kat behind the camera had eyes only for the white-furred female in the foreground. She was leaning on a railing, wearing a dark blue or maybe a gray-black dress – it was difficult to judge with the diffuse twilight - and looked away from the camera, enchanted by the ocean.

"This is marvelous," she gasped.

"Not beside you, it isn't, Carol," a male voice behind the camera retorted.

Carol turned her head and smiled, a coy smile on a face of perhaps 18 or 19 years. "Toady," she said, although she evidently liked his words. 

She turned back to the ocean. Her boyfriend made two steps to the left to change the filming angle, when suddenly a flicker rippled across the picture. An instant later, a flash dashed across the image, momentarily overriding the camera's brightness control. It shot away across the sea; so close above the water's surface it divided the breakers. The kat behind the camera monitored its wake by sheer reflex.

"What was that, Marc?" Carol asked, frightened.

"I don't know."

Marc ran to the railing and zoomed in with the camera to get as close as possible to the unnatural lightning that ran in a direct line toward Alkatraz Island. For a short moment, it could be seen on the island itself, then it just disappeared. Alkatraz Island looked deserted again, in a treacherous portrait of peace.

Carol apparently didn't feel safe either because she stated, " I don't like it, it's… it's creepy. Come on Marc, let's get home."

But, her friend had forgotten his 'marvel' in his curiosity. He kept the camera trained on the island, waiting for something spooky to happen.

He didn't have to wait long. From one second to another, several explosives detonated in rapid succession, leveling the mainland-facing side of the prison in a gigantic, orange fireball. 

_19 explosions_, Chance would've wagered, his feet almost touching the dark circular spot of soft drink that was forming on the carpet.

Carol was screaming openly now, Marc's filming ability showed signs of shaking hands.

"Why didn't we hear the explosions?" he asked wonderingly, two seconds before the sound was transported to the shore, along with the explosive blast.

The concussion wave took Marc aback. The camera slipped from his hand. The pavement was getting larger and larger in its focus, then the picture turned to static on impact.

***

The scene changed back to Ann Gora in the blink on an eye. The news helicopter had landed on Alkatraz Island in the meantime; she had used the break to seize an Enforcer willing to be interviewed at the cordon.

"Lt. Commander Steele, the damage of the explosions is quite extensive. How many casualties have there been?"

"Less than could be expected, Ms. Gora. Nobody was killed, we only claim 10 casualties. Maybe half a dozen warders have been cut by sharp-edged debris, and I've heard of a broken wrist and two or three kats with cracked ribs and burst eardrums, but, all in all, nothing serious. Yes, the blast was enormous, but well aimed. If you wanted my opinion, I'd say that…"

"Steele! Didn't I order an absolute news blackout?" 

The Lt. Commander, who had strutted about like a peacock during the interview, shriveled back to half his size and slumped out of the picture. He wouldn't have shaken off Commander Feral, but Ann Gora, seeing her chance for an interview, stepped in for him.

"Commander Feral, who was the electric accomplice of Turmoil? Your Enforcers have Hard Drive in custody, don't they?"

Feral's glower, aimed in the direction of Steele, vanished as he turned to the reporter, taken aback. "How do you know about Hard Drive?"

"We have our sources," Ann responded with the calmness of a professional. "You have Hard Drive in custody, do you not, Commander?"

Feral made a face, clearly disliking the course the interview had taken. He sighed. "I'm afraid Turmoil's accomplice is indeed Hard Drive. He escaped 8 days ago."

There were some seconds of surprised silence until Annie found her voice again. 

"Your Enforcers let Hard Drive escape and you didn't warn the citizens of MegaKat City of the danger they were in? Can I assume then that the Enforcers are a bit guilty of his escape? Let's say, incapable of guarding criminals?"

Feral's head was turning a unique purple color. He needed some deep breaths before answering.

"NO COMMENT!" he snarled. "It's time for you to get off this island. You're only in the way. Lieutenants," he beckoned to two Enforcers to come. "Take the camera team back to their helicopter and make sure they leave Alkatraz Island."

Ann knew her protests about 'the freedom of the press' were in vain, so she grumbled them only half-heartedly on her way to the helicopter. Once they were inside, the pilot began his lift-off, and Ann motioned at Johnny to get a close-up on her face for her finishing speech.

"You've heard it all, fellow citizens. Thanks to the incapability of the Enforcers, Turmoil, one of the most aggressive and dangerous criminals of modern times, is loose again, now in company of Hard Drive, another high-level criminal. 

Hard Drive and Turmoil, teamed up as the new force of evil. Will another team be able to stop them? Can the SWAT Kats keep us from a fate Turmoil promised would await us if we wouldn't follow her terms?

This is Ann Gora..."

At that instant, Chance was standing in the center of the sticky, sugary ring of liquid – and he still hadn't noticed.

  


WEDNESDAY, 7:55 P.M.

With sagging strength, T-Bone reached for the rope, using the forward momentum to swing over the dark, rectangular field of pyramid-shaped spikes beneath him. He landed on its other side, bringing up clouds of dust for the nth time this Wednesday after years of serenity. The closing gate would keep the dust imprisoned, whereas he escaped by jumping through the remaining gap and so left the reflex room.

After hours of training, the reopened exercise course had already turned to a dull monotony again, a great loop that kept repeating and repeating and repeating. He couldn't even make out the single obstacles any more.

_How many times did I make the run? 6 times? 8 times?_ T-Bone asked himself in a moment of sudden awareness.

Yet, he couldn't answer his question. He hadn't taken count, and the first rounds' finishing seemed a long, long time ago.

Jake and Chance had closed the garage at noon, due to 'personal reasons' as a hand-written sign at the front stated. Unlikely that anyone would read it. There weren't *that* many customers waiting in line to get access to their famous tune-ups. 

_Yeah, most probably the words will only fade away in the wind and afternoon sun, unnoticed,_ T-Bone gloomily reflected.

Not two hours after the closure, they had finished their repair on the TurboKat. The jet was as good as new in the upcoming crisis. It had been two silent hours. The power unleashed in Chance's welding accident had melted several wires in the wing together. The additional time fixing had not lightened up the already gloomy atmosphere, and they had remained mostly quiet. Afterwards, they had separated. Jake had left for the salvage yard on a search for new weaponry, driven by what T-Bone assumed was anxiety about Turmoil's breakout…

He became conscious of what *he* was doing and smiled. His wrinkling skin gave the sweat on his brow the opportunity to invade his eyelids, and the stinging sensation underlined his conclusion the most brutal way.

_While I… I'm training like a madkat, so I guess he's coping better with the situation than I am._

Despite the limb-numbing workout, the exercise course could do nothing to tranquilize his mind. Hours after the shocking news of Turmoil's escape it was all churned up, like a stormy sea, never to calm down.

It was Chance thinking, still Chance, even with his mask and flight suit put on. The T-Bone entering Level B of this dust-inundated course was just an empty shell, a valve to control his restlessness while the troubled part of him that, in fact, was Chance was fighting out the real - the psychological - battle.

Turmoil, Chance realized, affected him in a way no other villain did, and with realization came the knowledge that it had always been so. A ruined carpet in the living room was proof enough.

It wasn't love. Oh no, not love. Her criminal activity had seen to that. But, the undying wish with which she wanted his alter ego T-Bone to believe in her, to support her, had marked her different from the other villains. Marked her a kindred spirit.

A fast movement to his right interrupted his thoughts for the moment, but a professional throw with his boomerang nipped it in the bud.

The media hadn't gotten bored of prying at Turmoil and her crew after they'd been captured. They persistently kept inquiring for every tiny bit of information they could dig up about Turmoil's past, like hounds on a trail. All their efforts proved fruitless, however. 

Nonetheless, Chance was sure that whatever had changed her into the criminal he'd seen was similar to his and Jake's fate.

So, her love, as he had first thought, wasn't directed at him, though it had seemed like that on her ship last year. It was simply directed at someone who was outside regular city laws, a fellow outlaw, if such a term existed. Someone who'd share her opinion that the city did her wrong. Someone to rely on.

_Her wish for a partner could as easily have found Razor; only she didn't see him in action. She saw the TurboKat, its evasive movements, and her affection for piloting tipped the scales in its pilot's favor, in my direction._

_I was the one she hoped in. The one who failed her. A traitor._

Once more, the flying V came back to his hand and T-Bone snatched it unconsciously.

There, he had closed in on the origin of his fears. His *betrayal* as Turmoil would see it. For all the other criminals, even DarkKat or Dr. Viper, he was just an obstacle in their way to bend MegaKat City to their wills. For Turmoil, he was a personal matter.

T-Bone and Turmoil weren't that different when it came to personal matters, therefore Chance could tell the consequences. 

*It meant whatever happened wouldn't be pleasant*.

A head landed before his feet, not for the first time, but this time, he noticed. Right now, it was the head of DarkKat, but a pile of papier-mâché all around him, parts of criminals and innocents alike, told him he'd acted mechanically from the start.

He forced himself to stop. This was senseless; there was no reason in exercising more. It would only tire him out, and that was the last thing he needed. With a sigh, he turned toward the exit.

***

Six doors, three staircases and one ladder later, a filthy, sweating T-Bone found himself back in the hangar in front of his locker.

Even with every single one of its technical components lying astray all over the floor, with its partly Agracite-alloyed walls and its cathedral size, the hangar lacked one basic thing Chance needed at the moment: a shower.

Both he and Jake had wanted to install a shower down here right from the start of their SWAT Kat double lives, yet they never had had time to fulfill their wish. Always, the repair of a gadget, the TurboKat, or - in the most seldom cases - a customer's car had forced them to delay their plans.

They had a shower upstairs in the house, so the matter wasn't urgent, but it was annoying. If they didn't want to challenge their luck (and presently, Chance *really* didn't want to challenge it), they couldn't dare to walk into their house in the SWAT Kats' costumes. Therefore, to get a shower was an act of undressing and changing into the mechanics outfit in the hangar, only to undress upstairs yet again. 

Usually, Chance would have vowed to himself to put the installation on top of his list of priorities. Not this time.

He stood frozen in his place, his costume in a pile on the ground beside him, and looked down at the beige box that had fallen out of the lowest compartment of his locker when he'd groped for his civilian cloths with clumsiness apt for the day.

_The uniform!_

Somehow fearful, as if the box contained a living bug hive, Chance lifted its lid and fetched the uniform.

The black textile looked gray with its dust covering, and moths had declared a sleeve a feast's main course for all their relatives, but it still was the Flight Commander uniform Turmoil had offered him, along with the corresponding rank, no doubt.

Chance blankly stared at the uniform, his soul lost in memories long past.

He had put it into this box more than a year ago, right after he'd come back from his clash with Turmoil. Even so, that day's events obsessed him, and, not a week afterwards, he had equipped his SWAT Kats uniforms' breast pockets with picklocks, in addition to the ones on the glovatrix, in case a fall from a ship like that would happen again.

_No fall, I kicked him!_

The moments when he had thrown Razor off Turmoil's ship caused him nightmares regularly. The *whole day* caused him nightmares. In these nightmares, he always turned sides for real, and then, Razor's look when he realized his treason, sometimes – like tonight - Jake's look, unmasked in the illogicality of a dream, his scream on his fall to meet his doom, the sickening… 

It made him gasp for breath when he woke up, the scene so real he always believed it had in truth happened for some seconds of out-and-out torture.

_"What does that city have to offer that can compare with me?"_

He clenched the material into a ball, banishing the nightmares from his mind, only to recall the hour he'd spent with Turmoil, often had even agreed over things with her. 

Most high-tech machinery development didn't go far beyond the drawing board stage. A shame! One could expect MegaKat City to spend millions in weapons research and defense, with all the criminals terrorizing the city. But, the funds were paid out for other things, for banal affairs like promotion tours or reelection parties, for … heck who knew what else!

So, the city put all its hope into the Enforcers. A preposterous hope in Chance's eyes.

But, instead, the citizens kept the faith with the Enforcers, sharing their view of the SWAT Kats being vigilantes every time they failed to bring some dork to justice right away.

A bridge destroyed – and they were a menace to society.

A threat stopped where the Enforcers stood by ineffectively – and the SWAT Kats were the city's heroes for the next twenty-four hours.

No wonder they had fallen for DarkKat and Hard Drive's quick-schemed plan to demolish their reputation so easily. They were a banner in the wind, changing with every breeze, as it benefited them best.

No, the city had *nothing* to offer. That was the one thing not contorted in his nightmare: the city had shattered his life. Well, not exactly shattered, but…

Oh heck, whom was he fooling? Yes they had shattered it. They *had* all shattered it. Shattered it completely.

He had tried to save it, and as a token of gratitude, he was now stranded on the salvage yard with a disreputable background and no chance whatsoever to have a well-ordered future.

And, the knowledge that this all wouldn't have happened had he followed one simple order - however stupid it had been - didn't quench the anger. On the contrary.

Only Jake kept him upright. Their friendship was exceptional, once-in-a-lifetime. If not for him…

Some resistance in his fisted hand called him to attention. Wondering, he searched the uniform, reached for the pocket and found the ignition remote and three palm-sized bombs, leftover 'gifts' from last year.

_"You don't know the half of it, pal. I just showered her with gifts." - No, you don't know the half of it, Jake._

Even he himself had refused to acknowledge Turmoil's proposal had been more than tempting. It would've been a way out of his misery. If Chance hadn't had such a strong backing in his friend, or, if the wound of their Enforcer dismissal had just been fresher, Chance was sure he'd have taken her offer.

That's why he had stored the uniform away instantly. Some offers one had to jump at, whereas others had to be buried deep. Really deep.

But, that didn't include the detonators and the remote. Chance, with a last check that they were working properly, stored them in the breast pocket of his next clean SWAT Kat uniform. Most likely, they were only a pebble in comparison to the arsenal of detonators the uniform's thigh pockets held, but…

_If I had all the world's weapons at my hand and she only the temper of the moment when she realized my betrayal, I'd still die for that pebble..._

_Oh help, what did I almost do?_

_"Turmoil, wait! Let me prove it. Lead me to that ex-partner of mine, and I'll toss him off the ship myself."_

If he hadn't had such a strong backing in his friend…

The Flight Commander uniform went back into its solitary confinement, fast and final.

***

The remaining hours of the day grew unbearably long as Chance paced up and down the house after his shower, waiting for an emergency call that never came.

Jake returned from his rummage at around 9 P.M. The news that he'd found something to be used for a new kind of missile lighted up Chance's mood for some seconds before he realized that the development would take a month – minimum.

Sleep, the only thing that would have freed Chance from his worries, wouldn't come. He spent nearly four hours awake in his bed, his hyperactive thoughts fighting against his exhausted body's urge for rest and winning. When he at last drifted into an uneasy slumber at 3 A.M., he prayed _I hope my bad luck's run out now._

His very last thought, however, fogged by fatigue that tore him down regardless of the abrupt terror it caused, was: _Now … united … with Hard Drive. Forgot … about … Ha…_

  


THURSDAY, 6:03 A.M.

A piercing sound made him stand upright in his sheet. At first Chance thought it came from his alarm clock, but a look at its face told him he'd slept through his 6 o'clock wake-up call undisturbed. Then, it hit him. With amazing swiftness, he jumped out of the bed. The klaxon silenced before his feet touched the ground. Chance ran to the door and almost collided with Jake, who hastened down the floor.

"It's Callie. There's a raid at Pumadyne. Seems it's Turmoil's gang."

"Then, we better hurry!"

_That's it, the welcome for a crimefighter in the morning. No time for breakfast, for a shower or just for a quick teeth brushing. No one who's asking if the hero would like some more hours of sleep._

_I never thought I'd prefer a cleaner's job in Feral's office, under his personal supervision, to my life._ Chance swore under his breath while running toward the hangar alongside Jake. _There's a first time for everything, I reckon._

Minutes later, on the edge of some forlorn desert afar from MegaKat City, between endless heaps of junk in a military salvage yard, a tennis court-sized part of the ground simply vanished, and a black-and-red fighter jet lifted off toward the skies, to what the media would later state as "the unpleasant incident that started the disaster."

This statement (false, however) would never make it into a headline. It would get lost somewhere in the middle of a paragraph, the newspapers bulging with information about the story of the century. 

A story granting top ratings, its events a direct strike to the face of MegaKat City.

A story that filled all news reports for the next months to come.

A story about the SWAT Kats.

A sad story.

Needless to say, T-Bone didn't discern that their action would lead to failure. 'Superhero' is no synonym for 'clairvoyant', and he took the course to Pumadyne Research Facility at maximum thrust, with the grim satisfaction that his role in the play had just turned from a passive into an active one.

If he had foreseen the events, he indubitably would have changed things. But, for the better…? Or for worse…? Who can say?

***

Five minutes after their launch, the SWAT Kats were nearing their destination. The curvature of the planet's surface made it seem as if Pumadyne's complex of buildings rose from the very earth itself at the horizon. They looked state-of-the-art, as did the infrastructure around the complex.

_What did ya expect? We belong to a high-tech military department. Here, the most efficient machinery and weapons in the world are developed. They literally drown us with funds. So, we're the best, finest-looking buildings and infrastructure you could expect, _ they seemed to scream at visitors.

_Right, _T-Bone answered in his mind, _that's why you're the most-chosen target for raids besides Enforcer Headquarters. And, you're doing a damn poor job at protecting your inventions, regardless of all your money._

Speaking of protection: the Enforcers had missed the summons for help. Only Pumadyne's own defense systems stood up against the foes, without much success.

"T-Bone, the dimensional radar shows power fluctuations throughout the buildings. It's Hard Drive. I'll ignore tuna for a year if I'm wrong."

"I don't think you are."

The complex grew fast in size at their phenomenal speed. T-Bone could make out several small dots running to and fro between two heavy-armored freight planes and a building with a colossal explosion-made entrance where a wall must have been an hour ago.

He wished the dots to be creeplings, genuinely wished, but their size didn't fit. Creeplings were too small to be visible from that distance. Therefore, the dots had to be kats. 

_Turmoil's crew of she-kats._ T-Bone concentrated on Hard Drive again. "What's he doin'?"

"He's beating Pumadyne with their own weapons. Pumadyne's defense systems are all connected to a central host from where countermeasures are initialized. He must've infiltrated one defense system, jumped to the central computer, and now he's happily leaping from one building to the next, deactivating each and every thread."

"So, his new friends can strip Pumadyne of its gadgets without the slightest resistance." T-Bone had to admit it was a cunning plan.

The TurboKat flew over Pumadyne. Turmoil's planes stood on a grand plaza, with 300 feet of space between them. For a second, T-Bone could see that the raid was in full progress, every kat lugging something toward the aircrafts. Barrels, boxes, crates, machinery, weapons – anything that could be transported. Then, the scene was gone beneath him, and he pulled the joystick to the left, performing an 180° arc that brought them back to their opponents. 

"Well, we'll give them one hell of a resistance. Nail 'em sureshot!"

"Roger!" Razor responded after an unusual 2-second delay. He punched some buttons. "Missile… deployed!"

A low rumble went through the jet as a Plain Old Missile broke free from its clamps and shot away en route for its ground-based target. It crossed the distance in less then 10 seconds and exploded in mid-air when it hit an invisible barrier not 50 feet from the nearest cargo plane.

_Crud, force fields,_ T-Bone grumbled and subsequently repeated it aloud.

"Maybe we'll have more luck if we add some extra charge," his partner responded. "Turn her around. I'll blast them sky-high!"

T-Bone did so, ignoring the additional g-forces that affected his body in the bend.

The she-kats hastened to get the load inside their planes. But, they wouldn't make it. T-Bone saw the missile materialize in front of his view screen at the same instant in which Razor announced, "Scrambler Missile, deployed!"

It cut through the air, followed a dozen seconds afterwards by another explosive missile. Razor hadn't waited to see if his Scrambler Missile would work. If it didn't, they could live without either of the two missiles. Both projectiles shot away toward the ship the SWAT Kats had spared the first time, the closest one at present.

The Scrambler Missile hit the force field and created a cobweb of lightning. All the she-kats nearby were on the run now, like startled chickens. They fled in the direction of the other aircraft. Some seconds later, the explosive missile reached the critical point where the force field was – and continued on.

The force field had disintegrated.

Now everything happened like a bat out of hell. The missile detonated at the rear end of the airplane, right at the open door of the cargo bay. A firewall rushed into the plane and ignited its explosive freight. The following chain-reaction blew the ship to shreds, a curtain of flames expanded 50 meters in every direction on the ground, almost catching up with the fleeing vigilantes.

The main blast, on the other hand, headed skywards, a mushroom cloud of pure heat and fire as high as a skyscraper.

A skyscraper in the direct path of the SWAT Kats' jet. 

_Damn, Razor, I didn't think you'd mean sky-high liter…_

"Holy Kats!" T-Bone cried, startled when a piece of metal twice the size of his beloved TurboKat emerged out of the flames without prior warning. A tiny voice in the back of his mind identified it as the airplane's former hull, while his other senses were feverishly avoiding a collision.

He nose-dived the jet straight into the yellow fireball. This plunge made him miss the wreckage by inches as it *_swoosh_ed* over their heads.

Then, the fire swallowed them up. The temperature couldn't harm the jet - its Agracite alloy didn't even heat up. But, when they tore through the wall of heat and broke free of the inferno, heavy streams of smoke clawed onto the TurboKat like ivy onto gravestones. The smoke only dissolved gradually after T-Bone made another one-eighty degree turn to close in on the remaining freight plane.

"Closer… closer," Razor whispered in anticipation of his 'kill' - the moment when the regular chirps of his targeting system turned to a steady high-frenzy hum that told him his aim had just lost its game of cards.

At last, his cockpit was clear again, and, suddenly, T-Bone noticed something he'd missed before because of the thick smoke. While most she-kats were pulling objects *up* the ramp, to get them into the cargo bay, two of them were pulling something on wheels *down* the ramp, unloading it. Something that looked astonishingly like…

_Like a portable Vertigo Beam,_ the tiny voice in his head had a re-appearance.

Yet, it was too late. The smoke had given them the extra time they needed, and one of the two she-kats activated the beam before T-Bone could even move a muscle.

A golden cone shot out through the air and encircled the TurboKat.

In a moment of eerie silence, T-Bone didn't realize he'd caught his breath, not until he heard Razor behind him exhale heavily in a replica of his own tension. 

_We both didn't pass out. It didn't work!_

He was overjoyed for the micron of a second - the Vertigo Beam had malfunctioned. Then, he heard a 'click' as Razor set off his missile launcher with a push on his joystick's button.

Yet, no missile came forth.

His fear turned to horror as he became conscious that he had yanked the joystick hard to the right in a reflex to escape the beam. It was still locked in a position that would have forced the TurboKat to rotate around her own axis.

But, the jet hadn't altered its course.

It hadn't responded to his joystick's input – no, worse - it *didn't* respond to his joystick's input. T-Bone pushed and pulled furiously, without effect.

The TurboKat was out of control. 

And, she was slowly descending!

  


THURSDAY, 6:24 A.M.

"T-Bone, we have to eject!"

Some warning sirens answered him, but no T-Bone.

"T-Bone!"

"I am *not* ejecting!" T-Bone gritted his teeth, exceeding the joystick's durability didn't create the wonder he hoped for.

"T-Bone, that beam turned our jet into a flying wreck of metal. My weapons are screwed, your controls are down, and all the other systems are influenced as well. They are currently shutting down one by one. I can't even imagine what they've hit us with.

We have to eject *now*, before the ejector seat or the canopy release mechanism is inoperative."

T-Bone's gaze swept over his control panel. Some lights had simply disappeared during the last minute; others had turned a malicious red. Warning lights.

_Crud!_

The bomb bay had blocked instantly the moment the beam had hit them; the dimensional radar was down, as was the Speed of Heat booster enhancement. In the next instant, the normal radar monitor started to flicker and went dead, too.

More warning lights lit up.

_Oh, crud!_

Still, he couldn't believe they had to sacrifice the TurboKat. The course they'd flown before the beam affected them had been almost parallel to the ground. Almost.

"We'll think of something. We have time. We're going down at a snail's pace!"

"This 'snail's pace' is another problem!"

_What? How could this possibly be…?_ Surprised by Razor's words, T-Bone looked up and saw his partner was right.

'Crud' was converted into something nastier.

When the SWAT Kats had first arrived at Pumadyne, they had come from the direction of the city, passing over long, green fields beneath them that separated Pumadyne Research Facilities from the first urban dwellings in the distance. They had flown over Pumadyne's complex and turned around over the spot where a mountain had been up to the last year, a mountain Zed had obliterated in his path of destruction. From there, they had started their first, futile attack, turned again for the second, triumphant strike, and then once again for the last time.

Back – forth – back.

As a result, they were now heading back to the city. At a faster rate of descent, the TurboKat would smash onto the uninhabited fields if they couldn't save her, but at their recent angle she would leave the fields behind…

…And crash into the first block of houses at the city's perimeter. With 90% fuel left, at a time where the streets were crowded with citizens – workers, school kids, motorists, - a crash would be Armageddon for this part of MegaKat City.

In contrast, if they ejected, the canopy would stay open, and the jet would lose its stability because the wind that usually swept around the aerodynamic form unhindered would catch in the compartment. Within half a minute - more or less - this resistance would lug the TurboKat down onto the fields.

Collision or ejecting, these two were the lone alternatives. T-Bone loathed them both.

As the pilot, T-Bone had a special bond with the TurboKat. He loved her, loved her truly. For most Enforcers, a jet was just a flying vehicle, an instrument used for the job. Not for T-Bone. He wouldn't give his baby up to rescue himself, although he knew quite well this affection could kill him.

*But*, he would sacrifice her, even if the price was his broken heart, to save innocent casualties. He had already done so two years ago, when DarkKat, Dr. Viper and the Metallikats had sworn an alliance to bring MegaKat City to its knees. Mayor Manx and Callie's lives had been at stake on that day, and the total destruction of the TurboKat had been the only way to sneak into their hideout.

Therefore, under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have hesitated to reach forward and activate the mechanism that guaranteed their lives in exchange for the TurboKat's existence.

Except this time, the situation differed from routine - Turmoil fixated his way of thinking. 

T-Bone could almost hear her laugh at him: _Goodbye, dear T-Bone. Now, you will pay for your treachery. Or will you steal yourself away once more? Sacrifice someone else just to save that miserable tail of yours?_

He clutched onto the joystick again – more vigorous than ever. _Oh Turmoil, you're wrong if you think I'm hiding behind others._

Anger and despair mixed in T-Bone, and a sudden idea was born out of this combination. A chance, if a slim one. Essentially, the situation was similar to their first encounter with the Metallikats, when they had fired their Relentless Missile at the jet. What T-Bone meant to do was alike as well, just more radical.

_More stupid. Utterly darn stupid._

"I am *not* ejecting!"

Razor's answer took some time. "Damn, bud, I hope you've got an ace up your sleeve. I *hate* dying!" He fell back into his seat.

_No, I'm bluffing. And, I won't let you die for my foolishness, pal._

"You won't die," he yelled over the voice the slipstream made on the opening canopy when he activated Razor's ejector seat. "You're out of here, buddy."

He looked over his shoulder, saw Razor's shocked expression for a brief, but painful and intense moment.

"What? NO! T-Bo…"

Then, he was gone, his voice cut off abruptly by the untamed winds that would nonetheless bring him safely back to earth with his parachute-equipped seat.

T-Bone pushed a button and the canopy slid back into place, only it stopped short of closing completely, letting a forearm-wide gap remain. He knew what it meant, but looked at his control panel anyway, out of habit.

The internal lamp of the button had disappeared, now the system *really* was down, the canopy sled locked in a position that was neither helpful for his collusion or ejecting problem. Maybe the split would be a cause to misbalance the TurboKat enough to plummet before she reached the city. Most likely, it wouldn't.

And, if not, he would blow the canopy away with his glovatrix's missiles, well aware this action would kill him either by the explosion itself or by the following jet's crash! It was a terrible all-or-nothing gamble; with his live ended if he lost.

Loathe to think about it, or about the fact that Razor would be mad as hell at him if he should make it back in spite of his odds. He had crossed the point of no return. His straw of hope better work.

Drawing a deep breath, he shut down the TurboKat's engines, together with *all* her computer systems.

  


THURSDAY, 6:26 A.M.

Even to him, even now, the idea sounded foolish, like turning off a car's engines at 100 mph on a highway, forcing up a steering lock and throwing its keys out of the window.

And, it wouldn't work if this beam were some kind of computer virus, because his plan was simply to restart the computers and engines after some seconds of disuse and to pray to the Holy Kats they'd shaken off the poltergeist.

Computer viruses weren't beaten by a computer shutdown. So, he pushed the option of a virus from his mind.

Perhaps it was an electromagnetic impulse that caused his instruments to go haywire. But, would his plan work against an EMP?

The engines stuttered and went out behind him. The loss of thrust forced the TurboKat into a steeper falling angle. To his dismay, it wasn't steep enough.

_This whole venture's crazy even without my streak of bad luck! But, right now, it's just straightforwardly useless. The TurboKat will still crash into that house block._

_Let's see, I bet if I try to turn my instruments on again, I'll get no response at all._

He deliberately waited some seconds to let the computer systems and the engines go cold properly. Then, he pushed the restart buttons.

He would have won his bet. The monitors stayed black, the engines cold.

_DAMN!_ Time was pressing, and that was the only reason no litany of curses followed. T-Bone guessed the collision was now one and a half minute away. That meant he would have approximately thirty seconds before he had to blow off the canopy, or a crash would be inevitable.

T-Bone started his countdown.

_Thirty seconds and running._ He tried the restart again, waited, got no reaction.

_Twenty-three seconds._ Another push on the buttons. And again, nothing.

The next try. While he leant forward to switch the systems on, he saw two rows of Enforcer choppers coming up over the green fields. Each row held seven or eight choppers flying side by side, and one single chopper led the way.

_There's Feral and his cavalry. Late as usual, but just in time to see my exit,_ T-Bone thought wryly and rammed his thumb on the last button as if to push it right through into the TurboKat's nose._ Fitting, really!_

_Eleven seconds._ Nothing. _Better try again!_

_Five seconds. _This time, he didn't even have the spare seconds to wait if the restart worked. Hundreds of unaware citizens would die if he expanded his time-span.

His straw of hope had failed.

_I'm sorry, Jake, I hope you can forgive me someday. I never told you I loved you like a brother, the little brother I never had. Maybe you know. Please, let it be so._

He aimed his glovatrix at the canopy above him. Its explosive could easily destroy a canopy – and cockpit, he was well aware – twice the size of the TurboKat. Thousands of images flashed through his mind, a torment so intense a single tear fell from his left eye.

His thirty seconds gone, he fired the explosive.

The glovatrix's missile was designed to wipe out the first thing it connected with. Razor's weapon creations almost never failed, and the explosive T-Bone shot off didn't fail either. It detonated on impact, incinerating everything within a sphere five meters in radius.

* * *

***To be continued - in "Nightmares"***


	2. Part 2: Nightmares

TITLE:

NEMESIS - PART 2: NIGHTMARES

AUTHOR:

Helion

BEGIN OF WRITING:

April 17, 2001

FINISHED WRITING:

July 21, 2001

FINAL CHECKING:

January 21, 2002

EMAIL:

helion.regret@gmx.net

RATING:

PG-13 for brief, mild language; for some violence / drama in overall story

SYNOPSIS:

…But things can get worse. Oh yes, they definitely can!

LEGAL NOTES:

'SWAT Kats - The Radical Squadron' and the characters of the show are the property of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

There's not much to add to the lengthy monologue that I gave at the beginning of Part 1. So, if you already read that, and if you still bear with me, let's start straight away.

  


* * *

NEMESIS - PART 2: NIGHTMARES

* * *

"To a successful partnership."

-- Turmoil in _Cry Turmoil_

* * *

"You will not apply my precept," he said, shaking his head. "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"

-- Sherlock Holmes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's _The Sign of Four_

* * *

THURSDAY, 6:28 A.M.

On its meeting with solid ground, the seat released the parachute, and it was dragged away by the winds like a leaf on a river. Razor stayed fastened in his seat, his gaze fixed on the blank sky in the opposite direction.

T-Bone still wasn't back.

Razor had no clue if he had died. The TurboKat had been out of his range of vision shortly after he was ejected out of her. Moreover, Pumadyne lay on a lower level than the city limits. Therefore, the fields inclined slightly, enough to obstruct his view. He hadn't heard any explosion so far, but even the sounds of a detonation would diffuse to silence over the distance between him and his partner.

Nagging doubts stalked him like hyenas. There was always a Plan B if something went wrong, but this time, Plan A had been risky enough. He didn't want to see Plan B in action.

Another minute trickled by, Razor seated in his chair resembling more a stone statue that a living being.

He was angry, he grasped; infuriated that T-Bone had ejected him out of the jet. Razor hated losing control, especially in such a delicate situation. How *DARE* he eject him? He'd wanted to stay in the jet, to ensure everything turned out as it ought to, but NO, T-Bone had taken the decision from him.

Razor couldn't believe it hurt him so much, and yet, it did.

He closed his eyes tightly. Staring into the sky unblinking made black dots appear before them. The sudden darkness didn't absorb his anger. Razor felt like someone had fed him on hot coals. Disgusted, he opened his eyes again.

To his surprise, one dot hadn't vanished, but grown larger. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief, but the dot stayed solid. Some seconds later, it took on a shape.

The shape of the TurboKat.

Where observers on the outside would've expected Razor to jump up in glee, he only clenched his jaws shut, adding fuel to the deep-rooted rage inside.

  


THURSDAY, 6:29 A.M.

T-Bone felt newborn. And, in a way, he was. He had finished with his life the moment he saw the missile leave his glovatrix in an adrenaline-retarded slow motion. Now, the gift of his unexpectedly prolonged existence was a drink he gulped down greedily.

His last computer restart had been effective. It had only taken some seconds longer than usual for the software to boot up. Then, the program routine did what it always did on activating the TurboKat, no matter whether the boot-up was initialized from inside or outside the craft.

It let the canopy slid back. As it happened in the SWAT Kats' hangar all the time.

With the forearm-wide gap, it opened fast enough for the explosive to miss the canopy by one or two inches. Whilst T-Bone steered the TurboKat away from its doomsday course, the missile performed a parabola and at last found its aim in a wheat field on the ground, wiping out a circle of more than 78 m2 of harvest and some tons of earth and clay.

T-Bone flew back to meet with Razor and found him amidst green fields of grass, where he landed the jet. Razor's expression wore the word anger in stamped letters written on his forehead. The sweet taste in T-Bone's mouth got a bitter touch.

He had broken the second promise in two days, the more important one for the first time ever: Their silent agreement to fight evil as one. The SWAT Kats couldn't exist as a team if they disobeyed this agreement. Together against all kat scum, that was the motto, and he had stomped on it violently the moment he had robbed Razor of his own choice.

Razor put his seat back into the TurboKat without speaking a single word, not even asking for help in the difficult task of lifting the heavy seat onto the plane's wing first.

T-Bone couldn't blame him. He opened his mouth to apologize, and then shut it swiftly. Of course, he *wanted* to apologize, but what could he possibly say?

_Sorry, Razor. It won't happen again!_

Sure, the right words, but could he promise it *wouldn't* happen again?

The takeoff was a job he performed mechanically, the self-asked question waiting for an answer and not getting one a more eminent problem.

Jake was his best friend, his support when he needed it. Heck, he was the slap to the back of his head when he deserved it, and that made him even more precious.

In short, he was family. To lose Jake was to lose life. He'd sacrifice himself three times over before he'd let anything happen to Jake *or* Razor.

They were on the way to Pumadyne once more, to stop Turmoil's crew before the she-kats escaped, and they couldn't afford this split.

"Razor, I'm sorry!"

"Yeah, I betcha are!" Razor spat cynically.

"I am…!" His voice faded away. The look he received through his rear mirror was meant to cut diamonds. 

"I just didn't want…," he started when he got no answer.

But, Razor broke in.

"YOU! That's the point exactly. You. I had no say in that matter. BECAUSE OF YOU!"

"But…" _I'm sorry!_

"Why don't you start a solo career? Just SAY IT OPENLY, and don't play this SHIT on me!"

T-Bone died inside; he'd screwed everything. It was ALL HIS FAULT - there was no mistaking. Now, he could think only of one way that *might* untangle it; he was going to promise.

"Look Razor, … Jake." Another premiere he never would have believed - calling Razor by his real name. "I'm truly sorry. I shouldn't have decided for you. It will never happen again, I *swear*!"

"No, it won't *ever* happen again!"

The finality with which Razor spat his own words back at him made him cringe. He would keep his oath, and on fulfillment suffer on a scale that made a thousand painful deaths seem a roller coaster ride.

_This promise I'll hold, but I'll swear this, too: If it's most likely that one of us dies while the other has a chance to escape, I'll beg on my knees your decision to be to save yourself._

T-Bone nodded with a heavy heart. From what tiny reflection he could see, Razor was a bit mollified. A little bit. At least, he talked to him again in a normal volume.

"Good, I'm glad we cleared this up once and for all. Now, let's kick Hard Drive and those crazy she-kats' tails."

"Rock 'n roll." His words more enthusiastic than his mood, T-Bone pushed the thrusters to max.

The leftovers from the destroyed cargo plane still polluted the air with biting clouds of smoke. T-Bone tagged on to them until they hovered over Pumadyne.

Enforcers surrounded the plaza, looking helpless despite their best efforts. T-Bone glanced down and saw Commander Feral look first to the wreckage of the cargo plane and then up to the TurboKat. He was boiling over the fact that the SWAT Kats had beaten him to the arrival once more. From the red spots on his cheeks, T-Bone wagered he wouldn't let so much as one good hair on the SWAT Kats in his interviews today.

T-Bone got heartburn, though not from Feral's drilling stare. It came from Turmoil's second airplane.

Too exhausted to either curse or sigh, T-Bone just closed his eyes.

"They're gone." Razor stated the obvious.

"I noticed."

"T-Bone, whatever they've stolen here at Pumadyne, I'd say it means trouble. We have to stop them before they can carry out their plan."

"How?"

"Considering the fact Turmoil managed to get two cargo ships, I'd bet she also has a second 'invincible aircraft'," Razor mimicked Turmoil's pronunciation; referring to her gigantic ship she had intimidated MegaKat City with. 

"Most likely the things they've stolen are basic parts to build a new Vertigo Beam, or even something worse. If I'm correct, Turmoil is waiting with her aircraft somewhere for the cargo planes to come back loaded, but that'll take some time, they're cargo ships after all. Slow. While we have…"

"The TurboKat!"

"Fly a search pattern; begin with the coast. With a little luck, we'll find her aircraft before her own crew gets back."

  


THURSDAY, 7:07 A.M.

_A needle in a haystack,_ T-Bone thought dryly. _If only this time it wasn't *again* critical to find this needle._

Indeed, today time was a commodity T-Bone was constantly short of. If the SWAT Kats wanted to find Turmoil prior to their adversaries' backup, they better hope for a miracle.

Even with Turmoil's aircraft being a needle the size of a tower block, the skies around MegaKat City, the haystack, were infinite. The SWAT Kats had searched an area of some hundred miles over the sea in the last twenty minutes, the waters far off MegaKat International Airport's flying routes an ideal lair for Turmoil's large craft.

And, so would be the skies in the mountains to the north of MKC or the endless deserts that embraced the city to the southeast and east like a lover. Some hundred miles explored, the other thousands of miles were uncharted territories on their tracking map.

They were flying over a region of the ocean ship captains avoided for its nasty reefs and tricky tides, the coast a straight line not one mile away, when the miracle they asked for appeared in the form of a dot on their radar.

"I've got her!" Razor shouted. "At three hundred hours, about half a mile away, 10.000 feet high."

The TurboKat changed course and gained height, flying into a cloudbank that took away the view on all sides. 

Finally, they broke through, and T-Bone could distinguish a gray form that stood out from the emerald sky around it. On coming closer, he saw it looked identical to Turmoil's aircraft he had bombed out of the skies last year, the one and only difference being its size. Built to a scale of 1:2 compared to the sister ship, it was its little twin, a prototype if T-Bone guessed correctly, designed to be manned by a small crew. T-Bone figured 19 kats would be sufficient to operate the monster and leave enough crewmembers at a loose end to sustain a fighter squadron.

Four powerful M-24 megathrusters at the rear end of the ship produced the power needed to keep it flying. That alone was a revolution of engineering, but the megathrusters were also capable of lifting the aircraft to heights that surpassed Enforcer flying routes. Watching all other aircraft from above, Turmoil had managed to creep into MegaKat City's skies the previous year, and, although even the engines could move such a mass only bit by bit, this disadvantage hadn't hindered her plans.

_A snake doesn't seem to move at all, too; you first notice it has sneaked up on you when it is too late to escape its fangs,_ T-Bone contemplated.

The ship vaguely resembled a naval aircraft carrier in shape, with a long runway that made out five eighths of her upper side and lead into a gargantuan hangar. Every moment, T-Bone expected the hangar to spill out Turmoil's squadron like angry wasps. But, by the time the aircraft filled his screen completely and still hadn't offered resistance, it was clear the nest was empty.

They had managed the impossible. They had outpaced Turmoil's crew.

"We did it!" Even shouted, T-Bone's voice couldn't hide his surprise. "Now, let's give them a bath before Turmoil can take a step against us and before her reinforcements arrive."

"No problem!" Razor was already punching buttons wildly. "Crud!"

_Uh, oh!_

A dot identifying a missile had appeared on the jet's radar. Only it came from the outer dot on the monitor and was closing in. Razor's missile would've appeared in the center, shooting outwards.

Although he knew the answer, T-Bone couldn't help asking, "WHAT?"

"Did I say no problem? It's more like: not probable. My weapons are still down. Whatever influenced them is hanging on tight."

"Hanging on tight is a good idea!" T-Bone shouted, performing a roll to the left that took them out of the missile's path.

Fortunately, the missile from Turmoil's craft seemed to be no heat-seeker and continued its straight course with a computer routine's stubbornness. In the end, it missed the TurboKat by 100 meters. 

T-Bone steered the jet into a horizontal again. On his radar two more dots had materialized, and he could make out the two missile's engine exhausts with the naked eye.

Their moment of surprise was gone; Turmoil's aim was improving fast. They had to do something, and they had to do it fast.

"Two more bogies coming in hot! We need our weapons, bud!"

Razor was already punching buttons like a professional typist. "It's no use! I can't get them back online!"

If Razor added something more, it was swallowed by T-Bone's maneuver as he pulled the joystick hard to his body, pushing the jet into a steep climb.

One missile was far off course, and missed the jet by two lengths, but the other was closer and would have taken an Enforcer pilot out of the sky. Only T-Bone's quick reflexes saved them.

_I really hate this day. What else could go wrong?_

"I'd rather not run away with my tail between my legs, but we're sitting ducks. Any alternatives to running?" T-Bone could think of none.

Razor was silent for some seconds too. Still, he came up with a suggestion. 

"Only one. We surprise them! Land the jet in the hangar and we sabotage the ship from the inside with our explosives."

"NO WAY!" _I'm not going on that ship again. No chance._

Another missile was launched from the other ship, as T-Bone's radar announced by beeping.

"Then, we either retreat or we wait here, dodging missiles until the cargo ship approaches, hoping the crew doesn't mind us annihilating its double… and, furthermore, we could beg them to reactivate my missiles too."

"That's not funny! Not funny at all.

Can't we inform Feral about Turmoil's ship?"

Razor's answer was matter-of-fact. "Feral would either simply not believe us, or he'd never be here in time to intercept her cargo ship before landing!"

A fleeting moment of silence followed as T-Bone digested the vinegary truth of his partner's words.

"No other option?" his question came close to a plea.

Razor just shook his head.

T-Bone's nightmare surfaced fleetingly in his thoughts, but he pushed it away. He imagined that a swim in a piranha-infested swamp held more interest than a second meeting with the she-kat.

Anyway, they might never again get such a fine opportunity to stop her, and it would be crazy to let it pass.

"Oh, why, damn, *WHY*?"

Reluctantly, he vectored the jet for a landing on the runway and raised the speed.

Their new set course was a collision course with the rocket. But, the distance to the missile was now dwindling rapidly, and it had to adjust its course. T-Bone used this flaw, flying a zigzag pattern to keep its lock unsteady. At the last moment, he dived the jet down and turned the joystick to the right, so the jet was flying vertically.

The missile passed where the TurboKat's left wing had been moments before. 

He altered the jet's course again. Not much later, the TurboKat touched the steely runway and braked to a halt in the midst of the hangar.

_Well, we made it here beyond hope. Surprising. So, what if it's a trap?_ shot through T-Bone's brain.

***

He wanted to ask Razor the same question, then realized the circumstances were far to complex for Turmoil to set up a trap. There was no possible way she could be certain the SWAT Kats would find her aircraft so fast. And, even *if* she had placed it for them to *deliberately* find it, she couldn't ensure their weapons were malfunctioning, and neither could she foresee their crazy idea to land the jet on her ship nevertheless.

Too many unpredictable factors; that was no plan for Turmoil. For Viper maybe, but not for Turmoil.

_No, not even for the mad green lizard,_ thought T-Bone.

"How many she-kats are on the cargo ship?" he asked. If he had only counted them at Pumadyne, but his attention had been focused on piloting.

Luckily, Razor had counted. "Seven for each ship. Plus Hard Drive."

Fourteen she-kats, that left five prisoners unaccounted for, Turmoil and four members of her crew. Doubtlessly, they were maneuvering this ship, but five was a small number.

For once, the odds seemed to be on the SWAT Kats' side. They only had to see it stayed like this.

"We have to strike before Turmoil's backup returns."

"I thought about that," Razor had given this point consideration already. "Maybe my weapons are down, but not all my gadgets!"

He pushed a button on his console and a grenade-sized sphere was revealed under a panel that slid back right next to the button.

Razor opened the canopy, stood up and hurled the metallic sphere down the runway with more strength than one would expect for his stature.

The explanation came whilst it bounced away on the metal grids, the sound of metal striking on metal near enough to the sound of his boots in his nightmare to raise the hairs on T-Bone's neck.

"That's a portable radar antenna. The TurboKat can't receive a radar signal in the hangar, but this baby – out there – can."

The sphere came to a halt some good fifty meters from the mouth of the hangar's alcove.

Three props extracted from the lower side, so the thing looked like a tripod footstool. Secured against rolling away, an antenna was slowly extended half a meter at the topmost point of the sphere, not unlike a car's radio antenna. Next, the sphere parted in two: an upper and a lower hemisphere, connected in a yoyo fashion, and the upper one with the antenna started to turn faster and faster, until the blurring speed made it seem unmoving again.

"If any ship comes close, the antenna will receive its reflection and transmit it to our glovatrixes."

He showed T-Bone the beeping radar monitor on his glovatrix's display.

"That should give us enough forewarning to get away on time."

It sounded too good, and T-Bone had to turn away from Razor to hide his skepticism. It was not the portable antenna that made him worry. The gadget would work as well as all Razor's other gadgets did.

It was the idea of a trap that wouldn't leave him. Something about the raid at Pumadyne made his head ache, an important detail, he was positive, but what…?

He couldn't get a grip on it and doubted a surgeon could.

_On the other hand, we didn't see much of Turmoil's crew back there. Most likely, my imagination got the better of me_. He chose _imagination_ over _nightmare_ on purpose.

"…fficient if we set up the detonators all around the hangar," Razor's words pulled him back to reality, and he followed his partner into standing up. 

"If we don't miss any exit, the explosions will make the thing inaccessible. The job is done in less than ten minutes and Turmoil could as well command a flying brick afterwards. Even the Enforcers can force them to land, then."

"Maybe you should stay here and reactivate the weapons. I'll place the detonators…"

T-Bone mentally kicked himself, and the silence behind him told him a kick from Razor wasn't too farfetched, either.

"Only if you want to," he added feebly on turning around.

"We will make this together," Razor hissed. "A swift assault and retreat. Together!"

His friend had all reason to be angry, T-Bone admitted. He had a knack for selfishness today – his nightmare had him on the edge.

"OK, buddy. But please put your backpack on," he said, fetching his from behind his seat. "I don't want to take chances."

_I don't want my nightmare to turn out true,_ he added wordlessly.

T-Bone jumped out of the jet with his backpack.

Behind and above him, Razor muttered, "As if I had a choice," but did as he was told to nonetheless.

He landed beside his partner, and both reached for the detonators in their thigh pockets.

It took T-Bone all his strength not to sigh, relieved. He didn't know what he would have done if Razor had refused to put his backpack on. With the three times he had already argued against – or even taken over – Razor's decisions today, another argument would've led to tragedy. But, if there was one thing T-Bone wanted Razor to have, it was the backpack. As foolish as it sounded, if his dream was more than just a dream, a prophecy of some sort… 

The thought was disturbing, and it took him more overcoming to go on than it had taken him to fight the ci-kat-as.

A door – or rather, a sluice to leave the hangar loomed up before them. Razor pushed a button next to it, and it slid open with a muted hiss. They stepped through, the door closing behind them, and placed a detonator on each side of the wall.

Their sabotage had begun.

"I don't know if two explosions here will be sufficient," Razor admitted his plan had a flaw. "The corridors are cross-linked. If one of the sluices is still accessible, the whole plan is ruined."

"Then, let's mine the crossings too. There are more than enough detonators in our pockets. We use the corridors to get from sluice to sluice, mine them, and move on. We'll hear it if Turmoil shows up."

Razor smiled. "Lead the way."

***

Tiptoeing in the direction of the heart of Turmoil's ship was a silent business. No shouted command, no alarm bell told them that countermeasures against their invasion had been initialized. If not for the powerful engines beneath them, their faint vibrations perceptible through the ship's structure as its own, metallic pulse, T-Bone could have sworn the Pastmaster had frozen time.

Emptied, the corridors appeared more alien then ever. Ghostly. Like in his dreams.

The SWAT Kats placed their bombs at strategic positions. The doors to the hangar always got a bomb from both SWAT Kats. Down the corridors, Razor or T-Bone would suddenly stop, having retraced one of the immeasurable numbers of pipes and cables and found it vital. Those got another explosive from their pockets. Where one corridor met another in a T or an X, they left three or four bombs behind as well, one for each direction.

On every one of this crossings, T-Bone couldn't believe that no resistance waited in a dark corner, the tiny voice in his head screaming, _Trap! Trap,_ louder and louder. But, the ten minutes almost gone by, even his advisor quieted into peace. There were only four more doors to mine, the explosions they could trigger already big enough to promise weeks of repairs for Turmoil. Right now, the remaining doors to the hangar were the eye of a needle to access the hangar, and, if they could fill this eye up too, Razor's association with a brick would be most fitting.

_Make that one door._ T-Bone realized they had made good progress while he was thinking. He put yet another detonator on a pipe in the crossing they had reached, one of the remaining five in his pocket.

_Holy Kats, this place is wired to blow._

The SWAT Kats walked down the dark corridor toward the last not-mined hangar door. Two seconds and an equal number of detonators later, the job was done.

T-Bone fumbled his detonation remote out of his thigh-pocket. He moved it into his left hand, feeling safe for the first time in two days, and pushed the door before him open with his other fist. They stepped through, and the sluice sealed up behind them.

_Trap! Trap! Trap,_ suddenly echoed through T-Bone's skull, his senses warning him beforehand. His blood turned cold. Framed by the TurboKat's silhouette in the background, her figure was no more than a shadow, but there was no mistaking the accent.

"You've made a big mistake coming here, T-Bone!" Turmoil's voice could be ice when she wanted it to.

  


THURSDAY, 7:21 A.M.

The SWAT Kats suddenly found themselves surrounded by Turmoil's crew. And, where reason was needed, terror won out. T-Bone let go of his remote, which fell to the floor with an ear-shocking clang in the sudden silence, and lifted his glovatrix.

"We're not going down without a fight!"

Razor snatched his partner's arm and pulled it down before a shoot-out could erupt.

His initial shock wore off, and T-Bone relaxed in Razor's restraining grip. "_You've made a big mistake coming here,_" that phrase kept repeating in his nightmares like a core string. To find himself in that situation again, in real life, had been just as bad as his dreams.

But here, to panic meant to get them killed, and that was that. No awakening! Nothing could help them to get out of this situation once they were dead.

"Still quite a nasty temperament you've got there, T-Bone," Turmoil said distastefully. "Too bad you lack the brain to realize it. Take your partner as an example for reason.

*Both: hands up*!"

Razor shot one final warning look at T-Bone and removed his arms, raising them above his head.

T-Bone cursed himself silently as he slowly started to repeat his friend's gesture. His terror had cost him the only life insurance they had. Turmoil would never fail to recognize the priceless object lying directly in front of them.

And, she didn't. "Kick it over here, T-Bone," she said, pointing at the detonator control with her weapon. When T-Bone didn't promptly react, she commanded again, after firing a warning shot next to his left foot.

"You better kick it over here! *NOW*!"

He did so, unwillingly, adding some more words to his long list of curses.

"Attaboy!" Turmoil picked up the remote. She even dared a loss of eye contact, but then again, more than a dozen members of her crew surrounded them.

_More than a dozen!_ For the first time, T-Bone realized Turmoil's complete crew was aboard. He looked sideward and there the cargo ship stood, halfway hidden behind the TurboKat's massive form. He turned his head again and peered past the jet, down the runway. The portable antenna was blown to bits, small metallic shrapnel strewn all over the landing strip.

A groan escaped his lips.

Turmoil didn't hear. She had concentrated on Razor. "I guess you have such a thing as well!" She waved with the remote. "Hand it over, and no tricks, or your partner won't ever see nightfall again."

Razor slowly reached for his pocket.

T-Bone watched with drawn breath. He hoped for Razor to trigger the detonators instead of fetching the remote. Sure, so near to the mines the explosion would kill them, but one didn't have to be a mind reader to realize what Turmoil had planned for them would end with the same result.

Razor's hand flashed back, and he threw the remote over to Turmoil and her gang.

T-Bone's hope faded away with the action.

Abruptly, he remembered the other detonator remote he'd retrieved from the Flight Commander uniform. He almost put his hands down to make sure it was in his breast pocket, but he managed to stop himself. He could feel it pressing against his chest fur. 

The situation wasn't lost yet.

Deep in thought, he didn't hear Turmoil's command.

"Cuff them!"

Two kats stepped forward with handcuffs. Those weren't ordinary cuffs; they emitted an electric current that rendered their glovatrixes useless. If T-Bone hadn't freed Razor from his manacles last year, Razor could never have fired off his grappling hook. And, without the grappling hook…

Their arms were snatched down roughly, and T-Bone could see the cuffs clamp shut on his wrists, the glovatrix on his right arm instantly shutting down the display and the weapon functions.

Turmoil would make them walk the plank. T-Bone didn't have to guess, he simply *knew*. From what he had seen of her, she would bath in the satisfaction that he and his partner had died in an exact copy of how Razor should have died not quite a year ago.

The runway would be the first place for the she-kats to make them jump. It was no more than two hundred feet away from where they stood now; the explosions wouldn't harm them there.

If he had one moment to turn the back on their captors before they were thrown off the ship – and that was more than likely, since Turmoil would want them to see their fate before she'd push them over the edge – he could ignite the bombs and he, and Razor could try to reach the TurboKat in the following pandemonium.

Of course, the plan held more than one 'if', they always did. Yet, it was a plan. And, with a plan, there was hope. With hope, confidence.

T-Bone raised his head and looked Turmoil in the eye. She had come near to take pleasure in her victory.

"You could at least have had your outfit changed, Turmoil. It already looked ludicrous the first time."

Turmoil's satisfied smile slipped for a moment, giving a hint at the contempt behind her mask. But, she caught herself fast enough.

"I'm glad the beam didn't kill you SWAT Kats at Pumadyne, T-Bone. I wouldn't have heard your death screams there. Now, I can enjoy them all the way down."

She gestured at a Lieutenant and both SWAT Kats were pushed in the back, forced into movement.

Pumadyne. That rang a bell again in T-Bone, the distinct feeling he had missed something significant.

They were escorted to the runway's side by a semicircle of she-kats, like a death row inmate on his last walk, the pace swift, the faces behind them stony, bare of any emotion. It was a fitting comparison, one that would have brought a grim expression on T-Bone's face if his mind hadn't been occupied with the Pumadyne question.

_What was so special about the raid at Pumadyne? There was no difference between it and Zed's attack last year. Heck, it wasn't different from all the other break-ins we have encountered at MegaKat Biochemical Labs or anywhere else!_

_But, when there's nothing unusual about the raid, what *was* unusual? Pumadyne itself?_

The piece he had missed came to him so unexpectedly he almost stumbled on his feet.

Pumadyne, of course! Pumadyne Research Facilities was located far away from downtown MegaKat City. The complex was founded outside city grounds; Zed had needed the quarter of an hour to get there from Dr. Greenbox's lab. The distance from inhabited areas was well chosen, it was a safety distance should a fatal disaster fall upon the labs, e.g. a virus breakout. The negative effect was: no one would see a raiding party out there; the spot was barren. Until someone at Pumadyne did call the Enforcers, they were on their own, not even joggers came out there to go for a run.

So… _How did Callie know about the raid at Pumadyne?_

Only when Razor stopped dead in his tracks beside him, the edge to their doom still a hundred feet away, did T-Bone realize that he had voiced the question aloud.

T-Bone halted too, ignoring the weapons pointed at him from behind. He turned to look at his partner, who averted his gaze, face downcast.

Turmoil, on the other hand, was all smiles as she moved next to him. Lethal smiles.

"I'm so sorry, T-Bone," she said with mock affection. "You have just blown up Plan B."

"What…?" For T-Bone, the world started spinning.

"Time for me to blow something up, too!" Turmoil extended the antenna from T-Bone's remote and pushed the red triangular button for him deliberately to see.

T-Bone's flinch was reflex, and it was the only reaction to the push. No explosion followed.

If possible, Turmoil's face beamed brighter than before. "Did you really think you could find my ship and sabotage it?"

Turmoil turned around and addressed her crew in a tone loud and sweet.

"Ladies and Gentlekats, the show is over!" She shot T-Bone the ghost of a grin and opened Razor's cuffs with a claw.

This time, T-Bone *did* stumble, his knees turned to jelly in a tick. Only his two warders' arms kept him upright.

"You've enjoyed our hospitality long enough, T-Bone." Turmoil came back and halted beside his holders. They forced T-Bone to a walk before he could recover from his shock.

The instant he did, his care wasn't for his own life.

"Razor!" He turned his head as far as he could within his bounded limits, looked at his partner's silhouette getting smaller and smaller. He still hadn't raised his head.

"RAZOR! What's going on?

RAZOR!!!

Turmoil can't be serious. Tell me it's not true… RAZOR! Talk to me, BUDDY!"

Razor's head snapped up with a start. Anger and shame had converted his face into an ugly mask full of agony. His words were spoken harsh, yet he had problems controlling his voice, and his eyes were bloodshot and moist.

"BUDDY? A buddy wouldn't have ejected me out of the TurboKat AGAINST MY WILL! 

You should have died at Pumadyne, T-Bone. I deactivated your ejector seat, so you wouldn't have had time to leave the jet before a crash. You would have died believing you had saved many innocents. You would have died as a hero!

OH, BUT NOT *YOU*! You had to eject me, so I couldn't control the situation, and then you pulled that stupid plan out of thin air that worked despite all odds.

It's your fault you have to see this. Your fault…" His voice broke.

Razor only poorly won his fight not to sob. He continued with nothing more than a whisper, like death speaking, but his voice carried well enough for T-Bone to hear over the distance.

"It's over, T-Bone…. It's over, Chance."

Something inside T-Bone shattered, each splinter a bombshell. They ripped him apart as thoroughly as a real bomb. T-Bone. Chance. It didn't really matter any more. The central pillar he had founded his life on had just fallen in like a house of cards.

The she-kats had to drag him, but his limpness wasn't resistance. It was defeat.

"Does it hurt?" Turmoil's taunt brought up only a blank stare.

"I have to thank you, T-Bone. Jake has tried everything he could to insure you'd die with the thought of having saved the city. I would have preferred your death quick and fast, not this charade, but he wouldn't hear out my reason. I'm glad he didn't. Both ways, you would have been completely unaware of how painful treason can be. But, now you know: There's *nothing* that hurts more.

This is the vengeance I wanted."

"Why, Jake?" T-Bone's voice was raspy.

"Because he loves me!"

Another blow to his stomach.

"Are you toying with him, Turmoil?" His questions were a last link to sanity. T-Bone asked them mechanically.

"You mean, like you toyed with me? *NO*!" her voice was annoyance purified. "I love him sincerely. We live for each other. And, that rounds my revenge off. You will die because he chose me over you. Because you're not the center of everything. Only it's too late for you to realize now."

T-Bone let his head fall onto his chest. It weighed tons. Before him, the ground dropped away, and an ocean of white appeared. Thick cloudbanks seen from above.

They stopped.

"Does Hard Drive know about you and Jake?"

Turmoil's chuckle was chilling for someone not as mentally anaesthetized as T-Bone.

"Hard Drive? I'm afraid Hard Drive has expired his usefulness.

And, so have you."

It was a feathery touch, but no more was needed.

T-Bone fell from the ship.

"No!" The shout was Razor's, not T-Bone's, and he came running just in time to see him vanish in the cloudbank.

Turmoil's sighed. "He didn't even scream. What a pity!"

She spun on her heels and left. After some steps, she stopped to watch Razor's thunderstruck form.

"He's been my partner for years. He was my friend."

Turmoil returned and raised his chin with a finger. "And, now you have a new partner. A new friend."

She lowered her head. "More than a friend." She gently placed a kiss on his mouth.

Razor stood like a marionette, leading strings cut off. But, after some moments, he returned the kiss, timidly at first, then with growing affection as he shook off his inner turmoil.

The scene lasted for a minute, but it could have been infinite.

At last, Turmoil straightened and turned. She raised her voice for her crew to hear.

"It's done. Prepare everything for our enterprise.

Soon. Soon we'll get our revenge on MegaKat City as well."

  


THURSDAY, 7:25 A.M.

He was diving into the first clouds, but even though the ground was still more than 7.000 feet away, T-Bone had given in to his fate.

His thinking was fogged by a pain with no equal, and though a meeting with the ocean's surface would reduce him to toothpicks, the throbbing pain would leave him as well.

Memories stirred; Jake's last accusation, Turmoil's comments, on top of incoherent thoughts from his SWAT Kats days, from the Enforcers, from his childhood. His brain was overloaded with hurtful information, a flipped part of him laughing maniacally that he'd wake up on impact anyway.

On the brink of death and madness, T-Bone couldn't afterwards remember how he saved himself. But, he did. His survival instincts kicked in.

As the last embers of the old Chance that had fled into some back corner of his mind fought off the freezing effects of his mental assassination and broke through, his actions were performed in a trance, yet they were calm and precise.

He brought his cuffed hands to his breast pocket and fingered for the picklock carefully. When he got it, he inserted it in the manacle's lock and worked the instrument, evaluating his progress with glazy eyes.

The cuffs sprang open, and he used his now free hands to activate his jet boosters. Two control handles extended from the backpack. T-Bone gripped them unaware, letting the tiny warrior inside him win over his fight for life.

The boosters began to glow red and ignited, not a minute too late.

He steered toward the coast against the moderate winds that would have lugged him onto the far sea to drown if he had deployed his parachute instead.

In his anguish, he didn't realize how *very* low he was on fuel when he landed on the shore five minutes later. He fell onto the sand, his hands and knees burying deeply into the wet mud.

He cowered unmoving, the last quarter of the hour still blocking his thoughts. He hadn't fully assimilated Razor's deeds up until now.

And, with the first pieces slipping past the block, he wished he hadn't. Assimilation brought up an agony that made the pain of before seem like an ant compared to a mountain.

"No…!"

He had followed Razor blindly onto Turmoil's ship. He had trusted him - trusted Jake - entirely, more even than himself.

How could he have been so blind? How could he not have seen that Jake's actions had hinted to this betrayal from the very beginning?

That Razor had changed his aim onto the second cargo ship at Pumadyne, although a shooter takes the first target out before switching.

That his second target had been a dummy, and that he had known this, blowing it to bits on purpose.

That Turmoil's conventional missiles were never meant to hit the TurboKat.

That the portable antenna hadn't worked because it shouldn't.

That every single deed from the search for Turmoil's ship to their mining strategy had been Jake's plan. 

"Noooooooooooooooo…"

Slumped on the shore in a small bundle no one would ever have taken for a SWAT Kat, T-Bone looked like a rock. Just another rock among a hundred others, if not for its blue color.

If not for the one tear that suddenly moistened the sand.

That Jake would have had to plan all this.

That he must've visited Turmoil in jail whenever he'd come back from the salvage yard with nothing more than empty hands and some empty words as an excuse.

He lifted his head, his whole body shaking. Tears were falling down from his face in heavy streams, drenching his uniform and the sand around him. He opened his mouth for an unearthly scream that went to the bone, the insight on the greatest shock of all put up into it.

That the last year of Chance's life had been just one

*BIG*,

*UGLY*

*LIE*!

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…"

* * *

***To be continued – in "Heroes spent"***


	3. Part 3: Heroes Spent

TITLE:

NEMESIS - PART 3: HEROES SPENT

AUTHOR:

Helion

BEGIN OF WRITING:

July 24, 2001

FINISHED WRITING:

September 30, 2001

FINAL CHECKING:

March 30, 2002

EMAIL:

helion.regret@gmx.net

RATING / WARNINGS:

PG-13 for some violence and drama in overall story

SYNOPSIS:

Dazed and stabbed at heart, T-Bone's permanent companion is pain as he walks away from the spot on the beach where his faith in his double life has left him. As he searches for answers to his questions, the only thing more excruciating than not finding any might be getting some.

LEGAL NOTICE:

'SWAT Kats - The Radical Squadron' and the characters of the show are the property of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Part three of six; the first half is finished… Here's actually a part that does without violence and cursing for a change. My thanks once more go to C. L. Furlong, who helped me a lot to steer clear of some mistakes in this part, even when he did not know where I was heading. Okay, here it goes…

  


* * *

NEMESIS - PART 3: HEROES SPENT

* * *

Callie: "SWAT Kats! (…) We thought you were dead."   
Razor: "Oh maybe our future selves are, Ms. Briggs!"

-- from _A Bright and Shiny Future_

* * *

(…)   
Trust me to know and to do what is best,   
And I will take care of the rest.   
But trust is the color of a dark seed growing.   
Trust is the color of a heart's blood flowing.   
Trust is the color of a soul's last breath.   
Trust is the color of death.

-- from Robert Jordan's _Lord of Chaos_

* * *

THURSDAY, 8:49 A.M.

The high tide reached its peak at about eight o'clock and, upon withdrawing, took along the fine foams of saltwater that had dosed his uniform thoroughly for half an hour. T-Bone's shivering, though, didn't originate from his wet clothes and lasted on even after the sun tried to make up for the cold, drying up his back with the mild strength of a morning's ascent.

Inside him, the shock-caused pain had dimmed a bit, if the feeling of being hacked to atoms with a dull axe could be called dim. Liquid fire pulsed in his head, avalanching his old self and leaving only gloom.

Worse, however, was the understanding that his agony would never fade away completely, that it would be a part of him henceforth, buried in a now-shriveled part of his heart, in the now-dead layer of his soul.

_"BUDDY? A buddy wouldn't have ejected me out of the TurboKat AGAINST MY WILL!"_

Dead, and yet mourning.

_"You should have died at Pumadyne, T-Bone." You should have died. Died!_

Shriveled, yet hurting like hell.

_"It's your fault you have to see this. Your fault…"_

T-Bone. But Chance no more.

_"It's over, T-Bone… It's over, Chance."_

_It's over…_

_Over…_

What was left of his life? What was left? Ever since the day two young Enforcers disobeyed Feral's order and paid dearly for this decision, only two things made up his life:

His SWAT Kat double life and his friendship with Jake.

When he and Jake had arrived at the salvage yard, Jake's suggestion to build their own jet and do some justice had seemed a gift. This purpose had kept him upright. At this special point in time, the future his secret identity offered had predominated his comradeship.

However, that was then. Only a momentarily arrangement born out of his anger and shock. This purpose hadn't faded; for all the good things he could achieve as T-Bone, his SWAT Kat identity defined a great part of his life. And yet, that wasn't the major part of him. In their joint suffering, the friendship between him and Jake had strengthened, unifying them.

For Chance, this camaraderie had outshone everything else, the SWAT Kats included. And, there hadn't been a single day, a single hour, a single second, where he had thought it wouldn't be the same with Jake.

Until today.

Now, as all the shock and pain collapsed on top of him and crushed what had been his source of power up to this day – after it had crushed Chance – to be a hero and to do justice was suddenly a shallow basis, not likely enough to alone uphold the warrior he'd been.

In his darkest hour, T-Bone realized more than ever how much he needed Razor.

But, he had lost him. Lost him the most brutal way…

_BETRAYAL!_

_"You should have died at Pumadyne, T-Bone…"_

As this river of loss and trauma threatened to carry him off, the T-Bone wobbly rising to his feet was just a fragile, exhausted shadow of his former self. Black streaks cloaked his vision upon his sudden rising and his eyes were burning fiercely, dried out of tears for years in advance.

Stumbling away from the shore in search of the nearest street, he was only pushed on by the faint awareness that MegaKat City would be in danger.

Hadn't his mind been one big maelstrom of misery, T-Bone would have grasped the bitter irony of the situation.

With his life turned upside-down and his future unquestionably wiped out, the lone part of his former self that hadn't been driven out completely by the day's events was T-Bone's care for the citizens of MegaKat City.

The ungrateful, ever-complaining citizens…

Nonetheless, he would fight for them. He would suffer for them…

And, suffer he did! More excruciating than anything ever felt before, a second pain thrived inside him. A persistent, massive throbbing.

_Jake!_

He might have to face Jake.

It was like a paralyzing cold. His friendship with Jake was embedded too deep inside for him to be untouched by this image. With every step, this picture threatened to crush him, yet somehow he kept on walking.

Step after step. Meter after meter.

When finally he staggered onto a sand-crusted beach road, anger had built up in him to balance all the pain. It was a flaming rage against the Enforcers, who must have known about Turmoil's accomplice all along.

But, let them play the ignorant. They would help him – or would be made to, if need be…

***

As the figure of a SWAT Kat appeared in front of his car out of nowhere, Jonathan Waters suddenly wished he hadn't skipped work today to go surfing. He hit the breaks on reflex, stopping just in time, his bumper merely inches away from T-Bone.

What disturbed him more, though, was the expression on T-Bone's face when the tabby looked up. The look was unfocused, the things happening around him nonexistent. Jonathan doubted the SWAT Kat was aware of how close an accident had been. He held a faraway gaze, cracked and grieved; it almost seemed someone had killed his partner, the kat named Razor.

Wraithlike white ovals instead of eyes drilling through him, Jonathan wished he were far away from this cornered kat. He wanted to be on the other side of the planet when T-Bone found the enemy that had him so close to the edge. The thought of what he would do when he got his hands on him or her and what might happen to the innocent kats nearby was too dreadful to think to an end.

That look still chilled him standing alone in the middle of the street five minutes later.

Only then did he realize that the SWAT Kat had hijacked his car.

  


THURSDAY, 9:23 A.M.

His right leg swung a wide arc and would have sent a tin can rolling over the filthy ground in every other back alley. But, in this special back alley, a goods entrance to Enforcer Headquarters, it just stirred the air, for everything was tidy, and tranquil and ordered. No tin cans, not even some old newspapers were shuffling in the breeze that announced a storm.

For Lieutenant Gregory Maxwell Taylor, it was simply boredom.

He kicked again at an imaginary obstacle. How he wished for something that could not defend against his mood.

Since Turmoil had escaped from Alkatraz, Headquarters was a beehive of bustling activity, the number of patrols increased excessively. In fact, every single car officer was out on tour of duty, most of the pilots were flying double shifts, and those who didn't were adding to the number of officers guarding outside the building.

Greg Taylor was one of them. And, only one word could describe his guard job: unfair.

Enforcer Headquarters had received a hint as to the whereabouts of Turmoil and Hard Drive. Commander Feral himself was leading two squadrons of his best jets and officers available to track them down and arrest them. Of course, protecting Headquarters wasn't something to be abandoned for this hunt, Greg could understand. 

Yet… Best officers, that hurt.

Well, Greg *was* one of the finest weapon officers the Enforcers could present, but they certainly hadn't waited for him. When he had reached the landing platform on top of Headquarters, they were already gone.

It was a chase where every single minute would count, a sergeant in charge had told him, just before assigning him to this senseless post. A sergeant. A mere sergeant! The only souls he'd ever encounter in this back alley would be rats, and those rats would wave protest signs, demonstrating for their rights to be fed properly.

_Yeah, even rats would only come here if they were on a hunger str…_

Gregory didn't even hear him come.

Between one moment and the next, the rifle was ruthlessly snatched from his hands without care about whether he still held a finger on the trigger or not. It was thrown to the ground, splintering from the sheer power behind the thrust.

And, Lieutenant Gregory Maxwell Taylor found himself in a death grip.

T-Bone whispered coldly from behind. "You bring me to Commander Feral. Now! On the fastest route! And, I'm in a *very* bad mood, so you better start moving!"

Greg suddenly felt his innards freeze over as he frantically fumbled for a way to explain the current situation to his captor with a shock-blocked tongue. 

  


THURSDAY, 9:34 A.M.

Knocking on the cafeteria door would have done the trick, but Lieutenant Taylor was treated to the experience that being slammed at the nearest wall was just as good a way to announce an entry.

Alone in the room, Lieutenant Felina Feral turned around from the coffee machine, and Greg forgot the pain in his side as a wave of relief flooded through him.

T-Bone had taken the news of Feral's absence evenly and *asked* for his niece instead. But, arriving at Felina's office, they had found it vacant. Life seemed to mock Greg. Odds-on she was out on duty, hunting Hard Drive and Turmoil with her uncle. When he had stammered this to T-Bone, he had thought his life doomed. Even now, he didn't know how he came up with the idea that she might be at the canteen.

Either her uncle had put her off again, or she had had the night shift, but for Gregory that didn't matter anymore. He had fulfilled what T-Bone ordered him to.

For the first time since he'd met T-Bone, he was optimistic to see the end of this day alive.

"Lieutenant Taylor, what…," Felina started.

T-Bone came bursting through the door, cloaked in wrath, and raced toward her.

"YOU KNEW IT! YOU ALL KNEW IT!"

"We knew what? I…"

"Your uncle never has turned tail that easily. He was always despicable, but to place the accusations on his inferiors to get rid of a pair of vigilantes, that's low, even for him."

Felina had no clue as to what T-Bone was talking about, but, even if she disagreed with her uncle over his actions from time to time, this was going *much* too far. Anger flashed.

"YEAH? So. Why don't you tell *him*! You're already on the best way to get yourself a decent rest in a detention cell. I'm sure my uncle will visit you there sooner or later."

"If you think you could get me into the detention block…"

"Just go on with your amok accusations and I will! There are more than enough Enforcers in this building who'd die to see you locked away."

T-Bone stopped half a meter away from her and lifted his glovatrix menacingly. "They're welcome to try. If they're so keen on dying, I will fulfill their wish!"

"You wouldn't stand a chance!"

"ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO FIND OUT?" T-Bone aimed his right arm at Felina.

Felina fought to keep herself from countering this move with an attack. "The moment you injure one Enforcer, you won't get out of this building alive!"

"WASN'T THAT THE SOLE PURPOSE ALL ALONG? KILLING US!"

"YOU'RE MAD."

"REALLY? Tell me that Hard Drive freed Turmoil from Alkatraz!"

Felina hesitated.

"TELL ME!"

"T-Bone, I…"

"T-E-L-L M-E!"

"No, he didn't!"

T-Bone coiled back as if shot. "He hasn't escaped at all, right? It was just his surge suit that was taken! You knew Turmoil's accomplice was someone else!

BUT THERE'S BEEN NO NEED FOR THE ALL-SO-PERFECT ENFORCERS TO TELL THIS. LET THE SWAT KATS STAY COMPLETELY IN THE DARK. PERCHANCE THEY RACE TOWARD THEIR DOOM, AND YOU ARE RELIEVED OF A MEDDLING PEST WITHOUT GETTING BLOODY HANDS YOURSELF!"

Felina inhaled deeply and started to answer. She didn't get far.

"HEY," T-Bone barked, twisting his head around, "where do you think you are heading?"

Lieutenant Taylor gulped and turned against his urge to try to make a run for the door. From the surprised look on Lieutenant Feral's face, she had already forgotten about him. Why couldn't that go true for this T-Bone too?

"I… I mu… must go back to… to my post."

"YOU STAY HERE!"

"Let him leave, T-Bone!"

"HE STAYS HERE!"

"HE HAS A DUTY TO FULFILL!"

"TO ROUSE SOME CORRUPT BACKUP, NO DOUBT."

Felina barely suppressed her anger. "Lieutenant Taylor will go back to his guarding post. Just that. You can trust me on this, T-Bone."

Greg nodded furiously. If only he could get away from this place…

"DON'T COME TO ME WITH TRUST, LIEUTENANT," T-Bone poked her hard on her left shoulder with his index finger, his voice a heavy accumulation of hurt and ire. "DON'T *EVER* COME TO ME WITH TRUST!"

"Well, then there's only one way to bring you back to your senses!"

In a swift, fluid motion, Felina raised her arm and *punched*.

Taken by surprise, T-Bone stumbled a step backwards from the blow to his face. He snarled and aimed his glovatrix at Felina again.

"Now *that* was a mistake!"

"WHY? NOTHING I COULD SAY OR DO WOULD OPEN YOUR EYES. I CAN'T STOP A MADKAT FROM SHOOTING ME! C'MON, GET IT OVER WITH, T-BONE!"

"DON'T TELL ME I LOST IT! *YOU ENFORCERS* WANT TO GET RID OF US SWAT KATS! HARD DRIVE IS STILL LOCKED AWAY SECURELY, BUT YOU HID THIS SO TURMOIL COULD FINISH ME OFF!"

"HARD DRIVE IS DEAD!"

"What…?"

"HE WAS KILLED LAST WEEK!"

_"Hard Drive? I'm afraid Hard Drive has expired his usefulness."_

_Last week…? Turmoil sat in prison last week…!_

From one moment to the next, T-Bone collapsed onto the nearest chair feebly. _NO! No… Oh why, Razor, why?_ "Razor…"

Felina watched the SWAT Kat with a deeply worried face. As she heard Lt. Taylor gasp in utter relief, she realized that she, too, still held her breath. She exhaled heavily, but it didn't help to soothe her. She felt taut as a drawn bowstring.

"Back to your post, lieutenant. And no word to *anyone* about T-Bone or Hard Drive, understood!" It was no question.

Gregory nodded. He scurried to the door and closed it behind him before T-Bone could object.

But, the cowered kat at the canteen table was insensible to the things around him anyway.

***

T-Bone's sudden change in character frightened Felina. Only a thin, fragile line separated shock from anger within the tabby, and temper mixed with misery. He was not mad, Felina was now sure. But, he seemed broken, deprived of an inner strength that had been just as colossal as his brawny statue. She had heard him whisper his partner's name before he collapsed.

_Could it be…? Could it be that concealing Hard Drive's murder had caused Razor's death?_

An arctic hand tightened on Felina's heart at the thought. It couldn't be, or could it…?

She walked back to the coffee machine, her mind a whirl. She snatched her cup of coffee, still steaming hot, and took the seat opposite T-Bone.

How to start?

"On a routine patrol of the Evidence Room last week, late Monday night, early Tuesday morning, Hard Drive's surge coat was reported missing. As soon as we realized, we checked on Hard Drive. He was gone as well, without a trace. Someone had burrowed a way into his cell without triggering the alarms.

Our first suspect was DarkKat. His creeplings had freed Hard Drive before; it was only a logical conclusion.

Then, Hard Drive was found.

Each part of the sewage systems has to be checked regularly in two- or three-year rotations for breaches, obstructions, bubbles of explosive gases, and so on. Virtually every day a small part of the underground network of sewers is being inspected. Last week, quadrant AJ15 was safety checked. This quadrant includes the sewers around and beneath Headquarters. 

One worker stumbled over Hard Drive's body by pure chance. It was… not a pleasant sight."

Felina paused. T-Bone didn't move, showed no sign that he had followed her words. He looked down at the table, his torso moving rhythmically forth and back with his breathes.

"Forensics dated his death back to the very same night and stated electrocution as its cause.

Hard Drive's surge suit stayed lost. We even diver-searched the sewers, without success. Whoever had freed Hard Drive just wanted his suit, and had only taken Hard Drive along so as not to rouse suspicion.

But, that ruined our DarkKat theory. DarkKat would use Hard Drive, not kill him directly after making all the effort of blasting a way into his arrest cell.

Whoever the mysterious kat was, he or she had an impressive knowledge of Enforcer Headquarters, infiltrating the detention unit and getting the surge suit out of the Evidence Room. The hole in the bottom of Hard Drive's cell was the work of a pro, and left little evidence for our experts.

Then, Turmoil and her crew escaped from Alkatraz with the help of Hard Drive. If not for the lucky find of his corpse, we wouldn't have doubted it for a second. But, thus, we knew it wasn't him. It should only make the impression he were.

We needed time to examine the tiny bits of information we had. It wouldn't help our labors if Turmoil's accomplice became aware that we knew about the diversion. So, we held back with our knowledge. One word to Ann Gora would have been disastrous."

She sighed. *Not* telling had been just as catastrophic.

"T-Bone, my uncle didn't say anything so we could trace down the murderer and Turmoil, not because he wanted to get rid of you SWAT Kats. If I had guessed that harm would come to Razor because of this, I would have…"

"Spare me your words, Lieutenant," T-Bone murmured unsympathetically. "Commander Feral would have acted no different. A vigilante is no better than a villain, so why bother about a SWAT Kat?"

He chuckled miserably. "A vigilante is no better than a villain. Seems your uncle's been right after all. You want to uncover Turmoil's accomplice?

It's Razor," T-Bone said, his stare empty and lost on some distant point.

Comprehension dawned on Felina with several seconds delay.

"…No… It… It can't be!"

"BUT IT IS!"

T-Bone slumped down on the table again after his flare-up. "But it is…" His voice cracked up.

Lieutenant Feral tried to sift through the chaos in her mind. Razor not injured, not dead. Worse, Razor the aggressor who'd killed Hard Drive. It was unbelievable. And, then, there was T-Bone, right in front of her. He was Razor's partner, so could she trust him?

Before the clarity of T-Bone's infuriated lecture about trust could settle in completely, Felina noticed him looking up, and for the first time directly at her.

"I need a jet."

"A jet?"

"Turmoil has the TurboKat. I need to get back on her ship."

"Her ship?"

"Turmoil and Razor framed me there but failed to kill me."

"How…? Why…?"

"I DON'T HAVE TIME TO ANSWER YOUR STUPID QUESTIONS! I NEED A JET!"

"Not a proper tone for a request, mister! Are you going back to recover your jet, or is it vengeance you seek?"

"I just want to stop Turmoil at any cost!"

Felina copied T-Bone's angry stare. "Forget about the jet, T-Bone!"

"DON'T YOU DARE! I'LL GET MYSELF A JET, WHETHER YOU HELP ME OR NOT!"

"YOUR PROBLEM, 'CAUSE I AIN'T GONNA HELP YOU! I WON'T SUPPORT A BLOOD FEUD!"

T-Bone felt a stabbing at his heart. "I will fight Razor if that is what I have to do to turn Turmoil and her crew in. BUT, I WILL GET BACK ABOARD!" 

"OH, JUST A FIGHT, HMM? MAYBE TO THE DEATH?"

"DON'T GO CYNICAL ON ME, FELI…"

"It is illegal enough to mask your identity for crime fighting, but it's another thing to misuse your SWAT Kat secret in a bloodthirsty personal agenda. I WILL NOT HELP A…" Her eyes widened.

"Holy Kats!"

"The SWAT Kats," her adversary whispered, "are dead!"

Helmet and bandana in his hand, Felina looked into the face – into the *eyes* - of the kat behind the mask. She had never thought she would see this, and now that she did, she was at a total loss.

"Who…?"

"Chance Furlong," was the dispirited reply.

_Chance Furlong, one of those hotshot Enforcer pilots who got booted out of the Enforcers years back?_ she asked herself.

But, come to think of it, it fit. An ex-Enforcer as a SWAT Kat. Hence their outstanding ability at military operations, Razor's profound knowledge of Enforcer Headquarters.

Razor…

"Jake Clawson?"

He nodded sorrowfully. _Jake Clawson, my friend… my brother. I would have given *anything* to protect him. I've trusted him more than I've trusted myself…_

"Perhaps," Felina started hesitantly, "Razor didn't really betray you, T-Bone. Perhaps you escaped Turmoil's clutches alive because he prevented her from killing you. Maybe his plan is to double-cross her?" Even to her own ears, her words, meant to be hopeful, simply sounded stupid.

Chance's tormented stare was soul-ripping. "It was Jake who tried to kill me. His plans weren't meant to prevent Turmoil from killing me. They just failed. Don't slap me with a farce you don't even believe in yourself!" he spat back at her.

Felina remained silent for a moment, unwilling to answer his attack. Unwilling to admit its truth. Her decision was fixed anyway.

"It makes no difference if you're right or wrong on this. It makes no difference I know your real name, T-Bone. You're lost to reason. The Enforcers will handle this," she said, not uncaringly.

Anger crept onto Chance's face again. "WHEN DID THE ENFORCERS EVER MANAGE TO HANDLE THINGS? YOU'RE SCREWING IT UP EACH AND EVERY TIME! YOU DIDN'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT TURMOIL'S AIRCRAFT…

Wait a minute…" Chance trailed off as the news sank in at last.

"How come your uncle is tracking down Turmoil and Hard Drive when you seem to know nothing about Turmoil's aircraft?

How come he was out at Pumadyne that fast?

WHAT DID YOU HIDE FROM ME?"

Felina gulped and realized her mouth was bone-dry. She sipped at her coffee and grimaced. "Eewww, I forgot the milk!"

She stood up, walked back to the coffee machine, and took a flask of milk from a cupboard. When she turned for Chance again, he looked ready to pounce.

Forcing herself to a cool step, she got back to the table and sat down. She poured the milk into her cup, the coffee turning from black into a light auburn.

"Ah, that's better," Lieutenant Feral stated after taking a deep swallow. "How about…"

"*Don't* try to evade me! What are you hiding from me?" Chance's voice was frozen over.

Felina sighed, giving up. "The surge suit. On the unlikely chance that Hard Drive might escape, we bugged it with an emitter that uses the suit's connection to circuitry to get power. Whenever someone zips through wires, it gives off a signal we can tag on to.

We first received such a signal yesterday when Turmoil and her crew were freed from Alkatraz Island, and then today when Pumadyne was under attack. But, in both cases, Turmoil and Hard…, and… Razor were gone before we arrived at the scene of the crime.

About two hours ago, the signal came in for the third time. Its origin could be traced back to Pumadyne's SWD Complex Four. SWD stands for 'Shields and Weapons Development'. It's a secret facility hidden somewhere inside MegaKat Desert, and no outsider knows about it, or so we thought.

My uncle took off with two squadrons of our best pilots at once. Unfortunately, I was on car duty when they did." She grimaced at this. "I hope they can crush the raid. If the weapon prototypes at Pumadyne SWD4 fall into Turmoil's hands, too…"

Chance forestalled her. "What did Turmoil's crew get away with this morning at Pumadyne, lieutenant?"

"Why…? Ehm, let's see, they got some crates with standard Enforcer rifles, two crates with laser snipers, an experimental formula for an alloy that should be used on satellites, some three or four barrels containing a highly explosive gel called Rho…"

"How explosive?"

"I'm not sure. It's still in a phase of testing. But, from the reports I've read, I'd say it would be more than enough gel to wipe out Pumadyne SWD4 completely three or four times."

He simply shook his head.

"You really think Razor would miss your emitter? Jake would never be tricked that easily! I'm certain he has worn the suit several times to get used to it before he freed Turmoil. But, you never got a signal. Not until yesterday. Ain't that curious? Oh, and by the way: The last time I saw Turmoil, she was over the shore of the Pacific, not east of MegaKat City." Which was where MegaKat Desert was to be found.

Chance barked a laugh.

"So, I'm not the only one who's been fooled!" he said in the most caustic tone he could manage.

"Pumadyne SWD4 is just a fraud. Turmoil will charge in on this city with her aircraft from behind. And, there's only you Enforcers who could threaten her plans, so it isn't too difficult to guess where she'll head with her explosives!

Feral has already been gone for two hours now! You either give me a jet and manage to get up an air defense on Headquarters," he said, putting his mask on again, "or else I'd suggest you evacuate this building within the next few minutes!"

Though Lieutenant Feral recognized the sudden dimness to be imaginarily, the hot coffee couldn't drive out the cold that seized her.

  


THURSDAY, 9:55 A.M.

His hands were shaking. Badly. Convulsions visible through leather gloves that hid the outlines of fingers that had once been the steadiest fingers the Enforcers had ever known. Fingers meant for a virtuoso, a surgeon, or for a topnotch sniper. The fingers of a hero. 

_If life were a fairy tale, they'd still belong to a hero. Humph! To believe in heroes is as absurd as to believe in fairy tales._

The figure clad in black clenched his hands and ducked out from under the TurboKat, fleeing from his thoughts and memories as well as from his refection on the dark metal – in a vain attempt to escape *himself*.

He swiftly walked a few paces away from the jet. 

He.

The once Razor. 

The now Flight Commander. 

But, in reality only the burned-out remainder of the tom named Jake Clawson.

And, he knew.

Jake stopped, unclenched his fists again and yanked on his gloves with a fury. The right glove was difficult to pull out from under the glovatrix – the only bridge left standing that connected him to his former life, a reminder of his technical genius.

Of his folly.

When he got the gloves peeled off at last, he let them drop to the ground. His thin, delicate fingers were shaking more often than not these times. It looked like an illness. In fact, it was an illness. They were playing to the silent tune of withdrawal symptoms.

He hadn't believed it when Hard Drive had spitted it to his face that the surge suit caused a thrilling effect that equaled a drug overdose. He had thought it a plain lie, something desperate Hard Drive would tell to keep his suit. He hadn't listened… Hadn't listened when he should have listened, but when his life had been too far down the dumps to worry about the stutters of the shivering kat before him. 

He hadn't *CARED*, he'd just put it on. And experienced that cheating all physical laws known to katkind was such a sweet juice to drink, and better than the cleanest air to breath.

Experienced that it was so highly addictive.

He laughed. A sad, broken laugh that dully ricocheted from the hangar walls, distorted into not much more as a doleful whisper.

_So highly addictive…_

Yes, it was a drug, and, as it was true with every drug, it caused more harm than harmony.

Oh, sure, it was the ultimate rush to race through telephone lines and electricity cables, to be literally charged with high voltage to the point of bursting with power, but this ecstasy took away any sense of reason.

It twisted the character.

No, not exactly twisted it, but instead unfolded the hidden fractions of the soul that a rational kat kept locked in the deepest, most fortified parts of the brain.

In his SWAT Kat days, Jake had always feared that his alias could be revealed. But, unmasking Razor was nothing in comparison to unmasking *Jake*, to exposing the demons within. Hard Drive had been their – his – first victim.

All the frustration of being unable to wipe out the criminal activity in MegaKat City, all the aggravation at seeing two new seeds of wickedness spring up where they had just uprooted one evil tendril had accumulated during his years as Razor and boiled up in the cauldron of his mind when his warders of sanity had fled from the drug effect.

His dark half had snickered viciously at giving Hard Drive a special treatment of his own medicine and leaving his corpse down there in the sewers for the rats or the rot.

His other half, the sensible side he feared was no longer the true Jake, had thrown up when he realized what he'd done.

Progressively, his laugh had turned into sobs; something that, intensified by its echoes, flooded the ship with a gale of sorrow.

No one could understand his agony. Two grindstones were slowly turning, his demons and his scruples, and he was caught up in the middle. No one could understand him.

_Except…_

Chance could. As he hadn't been able to remain unaffected by the frustration to fight a battle they couldn't win, so hadn't Chance. But, Chance had always been so strong, so… fierce and proud. So different… even in his suffering. Different, yet maybe Chance would have understood.

Only, he was dead. Dead by Jake's hand.

Could he blame it all on the surge suit? Could he? It was so easy to blame. It was entirely the suit's fault, that *damn* mind-manipulating thing. 

If only he could fool himself into believing it. But, his conscience wouldn't allow it. 

_How to confess when there's no peace in truth, no salvation?_

No. It wasn't the suit's wrongdoing. It was his. Jake couldn't say when it had started. It was impossible to tell when every decision of his adult life had been a big mistake: Joining the Enforcers, the narrow-minded pursuit of DarkKat, the whole SWAT Kat delusion… Using Hard Drive's surge suit.

His decisions going more and more awry with every new step.

But, his anger had not been created by some criminal's technical gadget. Just focused and brought to the outside like a flower bud. It had burned inside him a long time before the day he became a murderer. Always close to the surface, always swallowed back by a young, hopeful kat believing in wonders. Yes, the anger had always retreated, but it had ripped at his faith every time, taking along a small part of it as a price Jake had to pay for his every victory.

Anger had burned inside him… And, it had consumed him.

How long it would have taken him to turn on Chance without the influence of the suit, Jake couldn't guess. But, turned he would have. Even now, his mind shouted _yes_ more powerful than _no_, and, even now, it shouted in rage.

_*Chance!*_

With Chance around, wrath had relentlessly been on his mind like a taut spring for a long time now, but after his first use of Hard Drive's precious suit not much more than a week back had let it all loose, he'd constantly been on the verge of forgetting himself. Even when the direct effects had worn off after a joyride in the suit, like his eyes, blazing sun-bright for hours later on, his wrath had stayed.

So, for the old times a tiny sensible rest of him had wanted Chance to die as a hero, and had created the disastrous plans for Pumadyne and Turmoil's ship that made him both laugh and weep now at their absurdity, but what a pathetic excuse they were!

Jake knew in his heart there were no excuses at all. Chance was dead because of his blinding outbursts of anger.

And, although it triggered an almost lethal pain, he knew that if life gave him another chance to go back in time to meet him for a second time and undo this, his anger would sweep him up yet again.

A tear rolled from his eye when he blinked, turning into a warm river of saltwater that wandered down his facial fur.

What lay ahead would cause more sufferings. *Much* more! A snowflake trampled loose by his deeds had grown to become an avalanche he couldn't stop anymore. Turmoil's Mega Squadron had already taken off to ensure Enforcer Headquarters didn't offer resistance. They must plunge into combat any minute now.

He had started his crusade. There was no turning back…

All he wanted, the single thing that mattered, was to be together with Turmoil. Solace she gave him, and peace. If only they could build their own little world, just the two of them…

Abandonment on his dreams came swift as a predator and quenched his sobs. Jake wiped the tears from his face.

The Enforcers would never grant him his wish. They'd hunt Turmoil and him day in, day out. He'd be a fugitive fearing every shadow until the Enforcers would spin a trap that caught them, or else be broken by the years on the run. Feral had destroyed his life once already, and his comrades – his *friends* - had looked away at that.

Now, he wouldn't let them shatter his future again!

Flight Commander Jake Clawson reached for his black gloves and rose from a kneeling position he didn't know he had fallen into. Slowly, he made his way back into the heart of Turmoil's ship.

How he wished he could think he were a hero again, or a warrior.

He had been once.

Instead, he was tired. Simply worn-out. Every step was a fight with himself, a tiny flame of resistance all he could muster against the gusts of wind the surge suit made. If he just hadn't given it to Lieutenant Archer to create Turmoil's diversion. 

After all, he *felt* better when he had it on…

Alive…

  


THURSDAY, 9:55 A.M.

"YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING!" T-Bone bellowed across the hangar on top of Enforcer Headquarters.

The words were swallowed by the indescribable melee around him. The roof was literally swarming with Enforcers walking or running to and fro. What looked like chaos was actually a well-ordered organism of technicians, guards, communication officers and many more high-trained specialists. Their significant job was it to ensure a nonstop disposal of jets and choppers for MegaKat City's best military pilots, who mingled with the crowds and added to the high number of soldiers. In this controlled mayhem, few kats had time to look at whoever had shouted, and these few instantly went back to whatever duty they were about to fulfill.

Felina Feral dropped her arm and turned to face him directly. "NOT A BIT!" she shouted back over the noise.

T-Bone crossed the distance she had won on him on his surprised stop with three long strides. He once more took in the form of the jet she had pointed out. It was a look much askance.

"I will not take this jet," he growled low in his throat.

The lieutenant adopted the unalterable stance of a Feral. "Yes, you will. It's the only jet left over that's in airworthy condition and tanked up."

T-Bone didn't heed the warning. "I will not take it! Give me one of the squadron's jets."

The Delta Squadron's jets, twelve in number, were what the tumult was all about. Feral was leading Alpha and Beta Squadron to Pumadyne SWD4. The Gamma Squadron jets were dismantled for overdue repairs. Two days ago, Felina had still grinned in glee that Manx had granted them the extra budget to get them repaired. Now, it seemed the worst thing possible. And, there was no doubt that Turmoil knew about this flaw – Manx had seen to this. He had been in the media constantly the last days, telling the story about his donation, in hope to gain more voters for his re-election.

So, the Delta Squadron's dozen jets were all Felina could organize in a hurry, the precious little last line of defense.

Them, and the jet T-Bone was so livid about.

Compared to the Delta Squadron's jets, T-Bone's supposed-to-be plane was *old* and a two-seater, the paint of the Enforcers' insignia beginning to flake off already. If not for the sure knowledge that it had crashed years before, the plane could have been the very jet he and Jake had dropped on Headquarters in their pursuit of DarkKat on their last normal Enforcer day.

T-Bone's fury was understandable. The Delta Squadron's jets combined pilot and weapons officer in one person, while these functions were distributed among an Enforcer team on a two-seater. He could gain access to the weaponry by switching on the auxiliary weapons panel of his pilot's chair, but since the plane was designed for two kats, not unlike the TurboKat, such a switch was supposed to be a stopgap solution only. Thus, it needed most of his concentration; concentration he'd rather spend on his piloting.

And, of course, the two-seater reminded him of his time he'd spent at the Enforcers with Jake…

Felina spoke up again before T-Bone could object further.

"I won't replace an Enforcer just so you can get the jet you like. Be glad I need every backup I get, or you would have never seen so much as this airstrip.

And, don't even dare to think about taking a Delta jet by force. You'd never make it off the building; believe me!

It's either the two-seater or staying behind," she said, donning her pilot's helmet, "the choice is yours."

With this, she walked over to her Delta Squadron jet.

T-Bone watched her from behind, an expression on his face that befitted a basilisk. The thought about taking a jet by force had occurred to him, and it had been tempting. But, he knew she was right; the Enforcers would be on him like a pack of wolves in a heartbeat should he try something as stupid as that.

Sourly, he inspected the faces of the pilots who'd fly in the Delta Squadron. Felina had collected those spare pilots from their guard posts at Headquarters. None of the faces seemed familiar. They looked so young and inexperienced…

_They are sending sparrows to fight a hawk,_ he thought grimly. 

That alone made him angry enough to ignore his own insight about stupidity, and he strode over toward the squadron.

On half his way, he collided with a figure in a flight uniform.

"Ouch." Lieutenant Taylor's eyes widened as he saw it was T-Bone who had bumped into him.

T-Bone met the gaze with his trademark stare of the day, and Greg started to stammer involuntarily.

"I… I…" He gulped and looked around.

"WHAT?" T-Bone asked annoyed, continuing on his way.

"I… Well… I'm proud to fly with you, T-Bone. You SWAT Kats are my role models; you are heroes to many Enforcers, though few would ever admit it. There are contests at the academy where the pilots try to outdo each other in radical flying and shooting. It's illegal, but there are always cadets who risk these contests anyway."

He beamed. "I'm a two-time champion."

T-Bone stopped, his fury locking on a new target.

"You want to be a SWAT Kat?"

"I… Ehm, w…"

"How old are you? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?"

Gregory straightened. "I'm twenty-four."

"Whoa, so you're no kid anymore?" T-Bone asked not without a heavy load of sarcasm. "Let me tell you something, lieutenant. Something about heroes.

It starts all very well, with a spectacular first appearance. It's no great deed you do, just turning in a simple criminal, nothing more.

But, it thrills you, satisfies you, and sooner than you think you're on the hunt again… and again. You catch another criminal, followed by the next, and the next thereafter. Everything is fine.

Then, there comes the point where the media gets curious. They've heard of a vigilante who wipes out criminals in the city. In short: you're a mystery. You're worth a big article, 'cause you're a hero and the deeds of heroes interest the readers. And, fascinated readers grant increases in sales.

So, you find yourself in the newspapers one morning, and on the TV the next. Suddenly, everyone knows you, yet at the same time, everyone wants to know more about you, see more heroics from you. You warm up at your newfound publicity, and before you can say 'hero' three times in a row, you're not going out there for your satisfaction alone, you have an audience to please.

'And why not', you think, 'it's just the same as before, only now I get the attention I deserve', and you're so fixed on the thought that you miss to realize that your demands start rising. It's not the small criminals you're after any more. Let others take care of them!

Pride was the bait, and it got you hooked. Only the villain masterminds are worth the taking nowadays, but they are not as easy to catch. They're smart, mostly, and elude you more often than not.

You start to train, to shape your body. Oh, sure, you've exercised before, worked out before, but now you *train*. *Hours*. *Days*. Fighting has turned into a personal campaign, and the media intensifies this feeling. There are citizens who depend on you, and they won't let you forget this!

Already, you've gone too far too fast. You'll never please the audience, no matter what you do. But, you try harder. When it has worked before, it must work still, right?

You're caught in a spiral, turning swifter and swifter. Your body is burnt out, your youth years gone. You've lost, you're spent, destroyed; you just don't know it yet.

The day you realize your blindness, your idiocy, will be the cruelest day of your life. Suddenly, you are stabbed in the back, your heart ripped out and trampled on, and you grasp that you have given up *everything* for a handful of ungrateful strangers.

You realize that your life is over.

So, you're twenty-four today. If you really want to become a hero, know that you'll never see your thirtieth birthday."

He paused for a second, looming over Lt. Taylor.

"When you think of your future, lieutenant, are six years sufficient for you?"

Greg trembled, his mouth open wide. Without answering, he turned and *hastened* to his jet.

"Didn't think so."

The technicians were closing on the final preparations for the take-off of the Delta Squadron. The last kats of the ground crew were scattering from the jets, consoles on wheels and other tools and equipments in tow. When Lieutenant Taylor reached his jet, he got more than one crooked stare for his late appearance.

T-Bone turned. His rage had evaporated a bit, and with it his longing to hijack another vehicle. His walking steps back to his old two-seater were accompanied by the earsplitting sounds of Felina taking off with her jet, followed in rapid succession by the rest of the Delta Squadron.

T-Bone cocked his head to see Lt. Taylor lift off last of the bunch. He followed his jet for a moment until he spotted a dark blotch at the overcast green skies. T-Bone wondered for a second why the Enforcers hadn't spotted the plane on their radars, and, then, he realized that they had. This was no aggressor.

Seeing the jet on landing approach to Headquarters, T-Bone cursed his bad luck and resumed his walk. Only about twenty meters separated him from his plane when Commander Feral's jet came to a halt at the end of the runway and was transported into the hangar.

Finally at the jet, T-Bone climbed the ladder in the hope of vanishing in the front compartment before the commander could make him out. But, Feral could sense the SWAT Kat like a magnet does a magnetic field and literally started running toward him as soon as he had scrambled out of his cockpit.

He reached T-Bone when he was just fumbling to get strapped in the pilot's seat with his backpack on.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, SWAT KAT?" he bawled.

"I could ask the same, Feral," T-Bone replied. "Aren't you supposed to be defending Pumadyne SWD4?"

That took the wind out of Feral's sails. "How do you know about…?"

"End your family's silly question-and-answer games, will ya? Did you stop Turmoil's attack?"

"Yes. And, we didn't need the help of a couple of vigilantes."

"But, you haven't caught the attacker."

"It's only a matter of time." Feral narrowed his eyes.

T-Bone could distinguish several more dots on the horizon. 

"So, you come back successful, but empty-handed. Maybe even with empty tanks?"

"What the heck are you talking about?"

"ONLY THAT YOU KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT WHAT IS GOING ON, JUST LIKE ALWAYS! PUMADYNE SWD4 WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE RAIDED, NOR WAS IT MEANT TO SPREAD YOUR FORCES TO WEAKEN YOU. IF YOU WERE TO COME BACK HERE IN TIME WITH YOUR CHEST PUFFED OUT AT YOUR SUCCESS, IT WOULD ENSURE YOU ARE *AT HEADQUARTERS* WHEN TURMOIL POUNDS IT INTO DUST!

If you don't want to be remembered as the Enforcer Commander who let his soldiers be turned into toast, you better start evacuating Headquarters.

Now, excuse me, I have an appointment with an old friend of mine, and I'd rather not miss it." He switched on the engines.

Commander Feral was baffled at the outbreak, his face a shade of white. "Who came up with the nonsense of giving you an Enforcer jet? Steele?"

"No. The lieutenant commander is taking a nap in your medical department. It's your niece you have to thank for that 'nonsense'. Be glad she provided an air defense, it might give you the extra time you need for an evacuation."

"YOU'LL GET OUT OF THIS JET AT ONCE. THE ENFORCERS WILL HANDLE THIS!" Feral barked, climbing up the ladder to T-Bone's seat.

T-Bone calmly strapped out of his seat belt again.

"That's the same advice your niece gave me, commander," he said, standing up and facing him. "You know, she gave me another good council…"

_*Punch*_

The blow came swift and unexpected for the commander, who lost hold of the ladder and landed rear-first on the ground, hard.

He snarled in surprise. "I'LL HAVE YOUR HIDE FOR THIS, SWAT KAT! AN UNPROVOKED ATTACK BEFORE DOZENS OF WITNESSES. YOU'LL GET TWO YEARS IN THE SLAMMER, AT LEAST!"

T-Bone ignored him, strapping in for a second time and starting to roll already.

"IF YOU'RE LOSING THE JET, YOU BETTER GO DOWN WITH IT INSTEAD OF EJECTING, 'CAUSE THE NEXT TIME WE MEET, I'LL ARREST YOU, AND *NO ONE* WILL BE ABLE TO HELP YOU!"

"Yeah, Feral," T-Bone screamed over his roaring engines, "the next time we meet!"

He accelerated, closed the canopy and tuned his radio to the Enforcer's band.

His helmet was at once filled with an orchestra of voices, mostly hysterical, a tower guide telling him he was not cleared for lift-off with an edge in his voice.

The incoming pilot of either Feral's Alpha or Beta Squadron didn't mind yelling at him. "Damn you, idiot, I'm on landing approach and almost out of fuel, so get your tail out of there at once!"

T-Bone just smirked. "You better have enough fuel left for a sightseeing tour around the block, 'cause I ain't breaking off my take-off," he retorted, racing on heedless.

At the end of the runway, he pulled the joystick to his body, shooting out over MegaKat City, at the same time the other pilot chickened out from a collision course in a litany of curses.

T-Bone maneuvered his jet westwards. The argument with Commander Feral had stirred up the uncanny feeling again that he had missed a crucial detail. He couldn't say what it was. Something had flashed up for a moment in his mind, in tow with the odd sensation that Felina had said something important, too, but it was gone before he could snatch it.

He focused on Jake again, unaware that his former partner was slowly becoming the prime target of his erupting rage. He shrugged.

Whatever it was, it would have to wait until he had settled the account.

***

Commander Feral watched the form of the jet getting smaller and smaller. Anger lay upon him like a second skin. T-Bone's punch to his face had been deft. The fur around his right eye was throbbing, the flesh beginning to swell already, turning blue and red. But, what really hurt was the humiliation he had been given in front of his entire ground crew.

It made him boil inside.

T-Bone had even dared to mock him at the end. _"Yeah, Feral, the next time we meet,"_ said in a tone that left no doubt T-Bone thought being named a hero was a free ticket.

But, he would be true to his word. Oh, yes, he would. _The next time we meet, T-Bone…_

And, there it was, out of the blue: The sudden realization that T-Bone didn't doubt his words…

…But, rather, that he did not care about being jailed… That he did not care whether he returned or not…

The sky Commander Ulysses Feral stared at was empty, serene. Not an object in sight to be taken as a reason for the sudden expression on his face.

An expression that came close to… alarm.

* * *

***To be continued - in "Fights in the Sky"***


	4. Part 4: Fights in the Sky

  


TITLE:

NEMESIS - PART 4: FIGHTS IN THE SKY

AUTHOR:

Helion

BEGIN OF WRITING:

October 15, 2001

FINISHED WRITING:

November 24, 2001

FINAL CHECKING:

April 24, 2002

EMAIL:

helion.regret@gmx.net

RATING / WARNINGS:

PG-13 occasional, moderate language and some violence / some drama in overall story

SYNOPSIS:

Twelve fighter jets constitute the last line of defense between Enforcer Headquarters and Turmoil's Mega Squadron. As T-Bone falls into line with the Enforcer Squadron, he must soon realize that the key to winning the battle can only be found aboard Turmoil's aircraft. But, so can be the Flight Commander…

LEGAL NOTICE:

'SWAT Kats - The Radical Squadron' and the characters of the show are the property of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Whoa, I've reached what I've come to call the "action" part. Things are moving faster now, as Turmoil's attack on the city is getting closer and closer. My thanks go to all the reviewers out there who gave me their feedback on the first three parts! I hope Part 4 is also enjoyable.   
In addition, my thanks once more go to Kristen Sharpe for keeping the SWAT Kats Fan Fiction Archive and, with this, the SWAT Kats alive. To her and all her occasional helpers, many thanks! 

  


* * *

NEMESIS - PART 4: FIGHTS IN THE SKY

* * *

"I don't know how   
Or where to start   
Here we're standing again   
And I see now   
From where we are   
That our road has come to an end"

-- Jessica Folker _How will I know (who you are)_

* * *

THURSDAY, 10:01 A.M.

The buildings were dwindling away beneath his jet, melting into one infinite sea of grey.

T-Bone continued his steep climb, following the course the Delta Squadron had taken at maximum thrust in the hope of cutting down their lead. He switched the radio's band to the Squadron's frequency. Felina's voice instantly rang in his ears.

"…is Delta One, I have an unknown vessel on my radar, please confirm."

"Delta Three confirms, Delta One. Radar shows one unknown vessel at twelve hundred hours."

_Just one ship? Could it be Turmoil's craft, or is it her second cargo plane?_

"Unidentified ship, this is Enforcer Lieutenant Felina Feral," Felina transmitted on an open channel. "Please identify."

Only static broke the silence.

T-Bone watched his radar. The twelve dots representing the Delta Squadron had materialized on its outer circle as he neared them.

"Unidentified ship, this is Enforcer Lieutenant Felina Feral. Please identify," Lieutenant Feral repeated again in a monotone voice.

He looked up. Ahead of him, T-Bone could make out the Delta Squadron as silvery dots on the far horizon. They were still above him, directly under the layer of clouds, and would break through in a minute or two.

A larger dot made its green appearance on his radar. T-Bone watched it nearing the cluster of the smaller Enforcer dots, his face still in a disturbed frown.

_The dot is too small to be Turmoil's aircraft. It must be the cargo plane, but…_

Suddenly, the dark bank of clouds stirred and partially dissolved as Turmoil's squadron broke through from above, spreading out and choosing their targets.

On the radar, T-Bone could watch the large dot disperse into fourteen smaller ones in a dreadful feeling of déjà vu as the enemy pilots discarded the illusion of the great plane.

_Damn, Razor, this is your work! How did you do this?_

Razor had somehow fooled the Enforcer radars into misjudging a whole squadron for one object, like their glovatrixes had done in the caverns when they and Felina had rescued Ann Gora from the toxic waste-mutated scorpions. And, T-Bone had almost fallen for the same trick twice!

He gritted his teeth to the point of pain. Before him, the dogfight began.

Laser fire shot out in red streaks between the two squadrons. In T-Bone's headset, an indescribable havoc of pilots' voices exploded. So did two Enforcer jets.

Grimfaced, T-Bone reached firing range. Without hesitation, he picked out an Enforcer vessel that was being attacked by two enemy jets. Delta Four, Lieutenant Taylor's jet. He concentrated on one of the two aggressors and pressed the button to fire off the lasers.

"Time to even the odds!"

His shoots didn't mark him the sureshot Razor was, but he hit the jet nevertheless. It spiraled away across the sky, for the moment out of control.

For aggressor no. 2, T-Bone launched a missile. A shudder went through the jet that made the TurboKat's rumbling on such an action feel smooth, and the missile left the bomb bay and traced down its target.

But, Turmoil's pilot recognized the threat coming toward her as the plain explosive missile it was, and since it was no heat-seeker, she simply yanked her jet out of the missile's course to the right in a curve that suspiciously looked like the beginning of…

_…A Blue Manx triple roll!_

"Lt. Taylor, enemy will evade in a roll to 0800!"

Such an action would bring Delta Four between Turmoil's pilot and T-Bone, making firing impossible for him, and at the same time would give her the chance to take on Delta Four and him one after the next.

Indeed, T-Bone's guess proved true, but his comrade-by-force didn't seem to have heard.

_Damn communication and damn this je…_

Gregory fired at the position T-Bone had given him. The enemy jet went up in one huge red flare.

"Alright!" T-Bone shouted. He used the short moment of peace to see how things were faring.

Better than he had feared, he had to admit. So far, only two Enforcer jets had been taken down, whereas T-Bone could see the white of an emergency parachute as Felina decimated the number of the enemies by a third jet. Accordingly, Turmoil's squadron was reduced to 11 machines. Just as many Enforcer jets were still in the air.

_The Mega Squadron's abilities must have suffered from the lack of flying due to their imprisonment…_

Delta Six ejected. Delta Twelve and Delta Nine spun down toward earth in a vertical spiral. Delta Eleven just blew up. All this happened in the very same moment.

The Enforcers were down to seven – T-Bone in his old plane, and six remaining Delta pilots.

_Aw crud! So much about even odds…_ T-Bone grumbled.

Being now numerically superior, one of Turmoil's pilots chose T-Bone as her target, and as T-Bone rushed in in a zigzag to avoid being blasted, himself trying to get a steady missile lock on his adversary, he noticed a second enemy jet altering its course to intercept him.

_Always picking out the old and weak, now that's unfair,_ he thought annoyed. _Up here in this jet, I'm dead meat. Let's see how well you fare in a *real* challenge, ladies!_

He pushed the joystick forward and corkscrewed down toward the silent city beneath him.

The two jets followed his course.

T-Bone jerked the jet to the left and right, barely managing to dodge the laser volleys from behind before he dived into one of the infinite abysses of the steel world of MegaKat City.

"This is just as good as a canyon ride!"

The world became a small slice of sky with a blur of murky silver closing in on both sides. T-Bone raced down street canyons and circumnavigated single skyscrapers at a breakneck pace that would have forced any Enforcer pilot to abort pursuit, but Turmoil's pilots stayed close on his heels, firing.

One volley hit the tip of his left wing, ripping a hole of alloy out of it, but fortunately causing no greater damage.

There was no way for him to fire back. He was in the lead, and all his weapons were only designed for forward shooting. He'd be easy prey if the artificial maze of glass, cement and metal didn't prove too much of a challenge for Turmoil's pilots.

Then, the black skyscraper of MBC appeared a good distance before him, its great antenna on the top of the roof making too weird an appearance to miss.

T-Bone got an idea.

He fired his missile at the very same moment in which one of the planes behind him fired a missile of its own – but this one aimed at him.

"TWO!"

His missile shot away and ascended, while he dropped his jet to a low fifth-story height. He sped away over crowded streets and dozens of citizens, who looked up in astonishment, grasping too late that covering their ears against the violent sonic boost would have been a more suitable reaction instead.

"ONE!" _This is getting close._

The enemy's missile was gaining fast on him. The skyscraper of MegaKat Broadcasting filled the whole size of the view screen before him. T-Bone looked up by the force of habit, but its roof was at too high an angle to see. He knew what would happen anyway, and he mouthed a vociferous

"ZERO!"

For 2.63 million viewers, the entertainment program was suddenly replaced by static, right from the moment in which T-Bone's missile slammed into the feet of the great obelisk-shaped antenna post, blowing the whole structure off the roof.

T-Bone tipped his joystick to the right, shooting past the studios of MegaKat Broadcasting Company on the same side, and began a rapid climb. Then, he pushed his thrusters forward, as the former antenna came suddenly falling out of the sky, missing him narrowly.

The missile, however, wasn't programmed for such an unusual situation and collided with the metal post thirty-five meters above the ground in its blind chase of the Enforcer jet.

It exploded in an enormous blast that took away any windowpanes in its vicinity, spreading a red-orange wall of flames and metal shards between the rows of houses, an all-covering blanket of destruction.

The second plane following T-Bone was still far enough away from the epicenter of the detonation to react by shooting high and thus missing catastrophe.

For the nearer one, there was no escape.

The jet flew into the curtain of fire. It was lost from sight for a moment before it exploded in a gigantic conjunction of tremor, flash and noise that made the first bang seem meek.

When the lone surviving enemy passed the wall of smoke and fire, there was no sign of T-Bone. She looked around frantically from the right to the left, and then down on her radar. A second dot appeared suddenly… to her right!

T-Bone emerged from a gap between the blocks of houses, finishing the 'shortcut' he'd taken. As expected, Turmoil's pilot was now directly beside him, and only some ten meters above him.

He pulled the jet further to the left… And, upwards.

His left wing hit the other jet's right wing from beneath, sending the female pilot rotating to the left, until the steel cables of MegaKat City's train bridge stopped this motion abruptly.

The jet blew up in a fireball.

T-Bone fumbled hard to get his own jet back under control. A crazy stunt like this was a piece of cake for the TurboKat. The simple fact T-Bone had forgotten for the moment was that an Enforcer jet was by no means the TurboKat. Only with his best efforts, he stabilized his flight, but the joystick was trembling in his hand now, struggling with a will of its own. T-Bone had to steer hard against it to compensate.

He fumed. Though there was no visible sign T-Bone could identify out of his cockpit, the stunt had caused some serious damage to his left wing.

_I won't play babysitter for the Enforcers any more. This *junk* wouldn't last five minutes in an air fight! The Enforcers have an advantage they better use: Turmoil never expected resistance. Indeed, there wouldn't have been resistance if not for the fact that I survived Razor's treason to tell the tale. _

He watched his radar. A big dot started to materialize at its outmost border, the size of the ship so colossal that it could be nothing else but Turmoil's aircraft. The green shadow it cast seemed to swallow all the smaller dots of Delta Squadron and Mega Squadron jets alike, and it drew T-Bone's attention toward it as if it was a light bulb and T-Bone the moth.

_Turmoil is on board of this aircraft… And, so is Razor. *JAKE*! _"My place is aboard that ship!"

The only question was: how to get there? Could he get past Turmoil's Mega Squadron and past the defense systems of the giant ship in an almost wrecked jet?

He scowled. "No risk no fun. There's only one way to find out!"

He plunged the jet back into the narrow streets of MegaKat City. Deep down between these masses of steel he would be undetectable on their radars. Racing through avenue after avenue, he crossed the distance that separated him from Turmoil's ship and when he neared the enemies' position, he once more pulled the joystick back. The jet shook dangerously under the stress that now weighed on the battered wing.

The Mega Squadron was engaged with the Delta Squadron, far from his position. As T-Bone had hoped, they hadn't expected a solo act from an Enforcer pilot.

Climbing high into the sky, he knew that the communication between Turmoil's ship and her squadron must have been doing somersaults due to his sudden materialization on their radar. Right away, he could discern one dot that was leaving the melee of the dogfight to whiz back to help.

T-Bone grinned. It would be a close call, but he doubted Turmoil's lieutenant would be fast enough to stop him in time.

He broke through the clouds, and there it was: Turmoil's aircraft. Certainly it would drop under the cloud layer only at the very last instant.

T-Bone matched its height and closed in.

_Now, we'll see 'bout the defenses on the big ship. I think you're bluffing, Turmoil. Let's see your cards. And, if it's the last thing I do!_

His warning sirens kept silent – the biggest ship was also the most defenseless one.

_Gotcha! This mistake will bring you down, Turmoil!_

"Time to knock at the front door."

T-Bone checked that Turmoil's pilot was still too far away to endanger him, and brought his jet onto a course for a landing approach and reduced the speed.

The airstrip blossomed up before him. Ground contact was just five or six seconds away when it happened.

Accompanied by a sickening screech, the first two thirds of the left wing broke away from T-Bone's jet.

_C…R…U…D!_

T-Bone lost complete control over the plane, and the joystick slapped hard against his palm as the Enforcer jet began to spiral non-stop.

The jet slammed brutally onto the airstrip and slid over the metal runway in a firework of sparks. About halfway to the hangar, the plane came to a stop, laying in a slant on its left side where the wing had been a moment before, the right wing pointing high into the air, a dazed T-Bone in the cockpit.

_The pilot!_

A wave of adrenaline wiped out his dizziness, and T-Bone looked up through his canopy.

With the angle at which his jet had come to a halt, he could make out Turmoil's jet approaching *directly* above him. Its pilot was getting into firing range, and T-Bone couldn't come up with a reason why she wouldn't fire straight away.

But, there was no way T-Bone could strap out of his seat belts and leave the cockpit fast enough anyway.

_And, at this position, I can't even eject without…_

In a swift motion, T-Bone turned his torso to the left and stretched his right arm past the pilot's seat. Aiming low into the compartment behind him, he fired a grappling hook.

The grappling hook's three clamps closed around the loop at the base of the weapons officer's seat, and T-Bone loosened his seat belts with his left hand. With his right, he pulled the cable back.

"Lady, you're outta the game!"

***

Kathleen Masterson's dutiful service in Turmoil's flight crew had lasted for almost four years now. She was a proud soldier and a pilot par excellence. Lieutenant Masterson had been one of the last pilots of the Mega Squadron to surrender to the Enforcers ten months ago, fighting on even after the heart-ripping loss of their flying base.

Thus intense was her devotion to Turmoil. It was spotless.

Not all members of Turmoil's crew had been that loyal. After the last year's disaster, first doubts about Turmoil's person had begun to spread slowly through the cells on Alkatraz Island like a treacherous, poisonous fog.

Overall, the object of the anger had been T-Bone. Those who questioned Turmoil and her leading abilities blamed her for bringing the vigilante aboard. Turmoil's plans had been destroyed because of her blind love for a stranger, a fact that had caused many of her soldiers to distance themselves from her in an instant after being captured.

Letting T-Bone live had been a mistake of Turmoil's; Lt. Masterson couldn't deny that. But, in Kathleen's eyes, everyone had the right to make a mistake, even Turmoil. More-so, T-Bone's ploy had been very convincing. She could remember standing at attention before him – the Flight Commander, inspecting the row of her and her flying companions, and the pride she'd felt when he had acknowledged Turmoil's praise about them being the best pilots in the sky with a nod of his head.

Then, she had seen how he had made his partner walk the plank…

He had been fearsome. Ruthless. A ferocious beast, and a fine Flight Commander. No second had she doubted his act. The double-crossing had hit her as unexpectedly as it had hit Turmoil.

T-Bone had fooled them all. The tactical disaster wasn't Turmoil's flaw alone; the mistake lasted on the shoulders of every one of them.

Lieutenant Masterson's loyalty to Turmoil had never wavered, and that was the reason why she was one of the 19 escapees, while just as many others were not.

"Understood!"

But, as she affirmed the control center's radio message, aborting her current fight and heading back to eliminate the ominous Enforcer jet that had suddenly popped up out of nowhere, she realized that the solid wall of faith was getting fissures.

It had cracked up with the Enforcers' resistance.

Something was undeniably utterly wrong here. There should never have been any opposition on their way to Enforcer Headquarters. They would have blown the airstrip to pieces before those fools could react, but the Enforcers had not only expected the attack, they had even *awaited* them, *knowing* the direction from where they would come.

Kathleen could just imagine one reason for this *coincidence* - Razor!

True enough, Razor's actions differed drastically from T-Bone's acts last year. He had freed them all from Alkatraz; he had organized the surge suit to make the getaway possible. And, to leave no doubt about his loyalty, he had given away his identity… and T-Bone's. He had even taken off his costume, helmet and mask, and replaced it by the Flight Commander uniform.

On the other hand, what did they really know about him? He had visited Turmoil on Alkatraz regularly, but none of the crew had ever seen him before yesterday.

_Is he really the accomplice Turmoil believes to have?_

Lt. Masterson pondered on the question while she made out the small form of an Enforcer jet preparing for a landing approach in the faraway distance.

Come to think of it, Razor – or Jake Clawson or whatever his real name was – had never shown much of himself to Turmoil's crew, just to Turmoil. Yesterday after freeing them, he had shortly coordinated the escape, and had then gone through today's plans with Turmoil – alone.

_And, he left at early evening, so that T-Bone would not get 'suspicious',_ she concluded her doubts.

Furthermore, Razor had retreated with Turmoil to her quarters for nearly two hours this morning, leaving it up to the crew to finish the last preparations for this attack.

Wrath shot through Lieutenant Masterson like a lightning bolt.

She didn't care whom Turmoil chose for her lover, nor that she enjoyed the intimate side of such a liaison and its pleasures so shortly before their attack, but it was intolerable the instant her passion endangered the mission again. Falling for the same mistake twice was folly!

_She must be blind in her love to miss the set-up._

And, it was so obvious. The Enforcers could only know about Turmoil's attack because someone had told them about it. This somebody could just be T-Bone!

_I knew it was a mistake to throw that SWAT Kat overboard! We only had *Razor's* word that T-Bone could under no circumstances survive the fall with a manipulated backpack! And, it was strange from the beginning that the TurboKat and T-Bone survived Razor's 'sabotage'._

_But, Turmoil trusted him…_ She harrumphed. _We should have blasted T-Bone instead of playing theater! Now, that would have been a surprise for that orange weakling!_

_Nonetheless, Turmoil won't heed my warnings if I can't present her some evidence. And, unfortunately, I can't…_

"Command center, Enforcer jet has crashed onto the airstrip. I repeat, Enforcer jet has *crashed* onto the airstrip," she tugged her flaring anger away for a moment to state the curious scene that had just happened before her eyes.

"Eliminate the enemy pilot, Mega Two."

"Roger!"

_No problem._ These poor soldiers had been dead the moment they had stepped into that old-timer jet anyhow. It was unbelievable how carelessly the Enforcers wasted their precious pilots away.

_Maybe they just want to get rid of them. To fly this jet they must be stupid…_

_Or reckless…_

_T-Bone!_

Her index finger slipped off from the laser release button again. Taking a jet like this looked just like him. If T-Bone was really inside that ship, then here was her chance to prove Razor's treason. She had better fly a circle to take a closer look. There was no possibility for the kats within the cockpit of the wreck to escape fast enough, anyway.

The firing postponed, she closed in with her jet until the interior of the enemy cockpit became visible. And, the thing she recognized instantly was the helmet: it was blue, with a red triangle over the visor.

_I knew it…_

Without warning, the canopy was blasted away from the Enforcer jet. The time she needed to realize the meaning of this was the fraction of a second too long to initialize countermeasures, and her fingers never reached the button at the front of her joystick.

Lieutenant Kathleen Masterson's last thought was that she had underestimated the situation. A new mistake, but this time, a deadly one.

Then, the empty rocket-driven weapons officer's seat T-Bone had ejected from the Enforcer jet came shattering through her canopy, smashing into her with terminal velocity and bringing everlasting oblivion.

***

T-Bone rolled out of the jet and to his feet. He hastened to put a good distance between him and the plane. Two seconds later he had to throw himself down onto the airstrip to avoid being beheaded as Lt. Masterson's incoming jet lost height, swooshing low over the runway. If not for the wreckage of the old Enforcer plane, it would have made it, but the thing simply lay in the way. Colliding with a tremendous roar, its remnants were lifted up from the runway and both jets were flung from board, clasped in a firm embrace. Seconds later, they exploded.

T-Bone was already running toward the hangar unmindful. On all his previous operations, it would have been the worry for Enforcer Headquarters that determined his speed. But, today T-Bone was past concern, though he didn't realize that he was.

Memories of his SWAT Kats years haunted him consistently, reminiscences of the great deeds he had accomplished together with Razor. With their lives – their real lives – withering away in the salvage yard, their double lives had been the spice that made his life worth living.

No, that wasn't quite true. Their SWAT Kats' double lives were naught in itself. T-Bone had realized that the bitter way. Alone in the cockpit he was just a pilot, nothing more, living and out-living danger by pure chance.

Their unique partnership had made the flavor. Jake – Razor – had always been there for him. The way his hand was a part of Chance's body, connected by flesh, Jake had been another part of him, connected by mind. To be bereaved of him felt like someone had torn out a limb in an amputation without narcotics.

_He gave up our exceptional friendship merely to be together with Turmoil…_

_We could have talked about everything, Jake. I would have listened. I would have given you my best council. I would have supported you and your decisions._

_But, you didn't even *talk* to me!_

A riptide of sorrow and rage rushed over T-Bone as he reached the spot where Razor had killed him - in a metaphorical sense - with his betrayal. The words Razor had spat at him that morning ricocheted in his head like bullets, intensifying the pain an inner emptiness caused.

His former friend and partner had left him and had changed sides… With a heavy heart, T-Bone accepted the fact that he was an unavoidable obstacle on his way to stop Turmoil.

_You took your side, Jake, and I chose mine. Yours is the wrong one! Now, your presumed-dead partner will bring you in._

Still, these thoughts created agony, but T-Bone forced it all down.

_Don't expect any special treatment, bud! _he thought in pain and in anger.

T-Bone inspected the hangar. It was deserted. Even the cargo ship was gone. Only the TurboKat stood desolately in a distant corner to the left. Her nose was hooked by a steel cable to a transportation rail that ran through the complete airstrip in vertical and horizontal parallels. _They must have transported her out of the way to clear the space for the jets of the Mega Squadron._

With a determined stride, T-Bone walked toward the nearest door. Punching the button next to it with all his might and breaking it to pieces in consequence, he stepped into the interior of Turmoil's ship for the second time that day.

_I have to reach the bridge. They think I'm dead, that should give me the advantage of surprise I need._

He inspected his glovatrix – it was operational.

_I'll have to take out Jake first with the Bola Missile and the cement machine gun. Turmoil and the rest of her little crewmembers should be a piece of cake._

_A quick entry, and they won't even know what hit them!_

As soon as he had thought the words, they made him frown….

  


THURSDAY, 10:09 A.M.

Turmoil sat in her chair, the marvelous crimson uniform and the unblemished boots creating an aura of power and dignity.

Indeed Turmoil awaited an answer to her command, and just a light tail slashing gave away the beginning of her anxiety.

"Lieutenant?" she ask-ordered again, with a node more firmness to her voice.

Addressed communication officer Lieutenant Pergell nevertheless wasn't prompt with her answer, double-checking the displays in front of her.

"I lost Mega Two on the radar. As it seems, the jet has slammed into the Enforcer wreckage and the thrust has thrown both ships off the runway."

"And, Lieutenant Masterson?"

Lieutenant Pergell spoke silently into her headset again and shook her head. "No answer."

Turmoil felt a twinge of sorrow pass through her. Lt. Masterson had been a loyal member of her crew, trustworthy, solid and smart. It would be hard to replace her.

"What about the Enforcer pilot?"

"It is unlikely that he survived the two crashes."

"Unlikely…" Turmoil grimaced at this. Unlikely was so vague a word.

Unlikely had been the danger of resistance as well. Yet, the dogfight out there clearly showed that there was a heck of a resistance.

In a military sense, there was no such factor as coincidence, but the single other explanation would be betrayal, and that was an impossible thing. Turmoil pressed the thought from her mind. For this operation, she had chosen only her most loyal followers. Soldiers who would fight and even die at her command without hesitation. It had to be coincidence.

But, even so, it was a hard blow to her strategy. Her plan was based on brilliant tactics, to be sure, but tactics using stealth, not combat. Turmoil simply couldn't afford a battle and the reason for that fact still made her gall after almost a year.

_T-Bone, you treacherous tomkat._

When she had offered him more money than he could ever dream of, it had been a sincere proposal. Money would have come to them in abundance once the city had started paying up her air transportation fees.

But, due to T-Bone's treason, she had never seen one bill of that money, and her operation had been so expensive that it had left merely a trickle of her erstwhile immense fortune.

The plans she had worked on so meticulously had been destroyed by the SWAT Kats, as had her wealth. This puny prototype of an aircraft and the fourteen prototype jets of the Mega Squadron were all that was left to her, along with not much more than a handful of missiles for their arming. It was not nearly enough to equip this ship – it wouldn't even have been a sufficient number to stock all the jets, if not for Razor's genius.

She smiled brightly. Jake was the jewel that balanced her losses.

His stepping into her life was almost worth spending ten months in prison. To find love when it was so unexpected was priceless, and even with a battle going on that needed her full concentration, Turmoil couldn't stop her thoughts from trailing off and to the slim, orange tom.

Slim he was, yes, but strong. Sensitive, and yet tough. Jake combined many controversial traits in his personality, a curious gift that Turmoil had never encountered before in any other kat. If she had just found him before her first attack on MegaKat City…

Even now, she missed him, longed to touch him. Turmoil would have never believed such a thing after that incident with T-Bone.

The smile made way for a tart face.

T-Bone. He was the other thing that made Jake even more precious. To get back at T-Bone for his breaking of her heart, for crushing her plans, Turmoil would have given away her right arm. The first months on Alkatraz were just centered on one point – revenge.

By finding Jake, revenge had been the additional benefit that had come in tow. She had feasted on that bonus every day until this morning.

_Too bad I couldn't see your face when you found out that your picklock wouldn't save your stinking tai…_

"Mega One has ejected."

_DAMN!_ Her rage didn't show on the outside. She was serenity purified. It didn't do to lose temper in front of her crew. 

_That was pilot number six to fail. Now, the squadron is down to eight ships._

"How many Enforcer jets are still in the air?"

"Five."

This was worse than expected.

_Maybe the resistance is a fruit of treachery after all. I can trust no one but Jake, really. I will make certain of the loyalty of the rest of my crew once the Enforcers are defeated._

She pushed a communicator button on the armrest of her chair.

"Turmoil to Flight Commander."

Jake's voice came in with a metallic touch. "Flight Commander here."

"One Enforcer jet has crashed onto our runway, and was then pushed overboard by Mega Two. Nevertheless, its pilot might have survived the collision. Check out if he is aboard. If you spot him, see that he does not hinder us. But, hurry! In less than ten minutes, you should start to move the bomb."

Jake's answer was just half a second delayed. "Consider it done."

"Mega Six has shot down one Enforcer jet," Lieutenant Pergell announced.

_That leaves four Enforcers!_ Turmoil leaned back. With Jake on her side, nothing would stop her this time.

  


THURSDAY, 10:10 A.M.

T-Bone sneaked deeper down the corridors toward the command center and not much more than some thin layers of steel under his feet separated him from a free fall into the world beneath. The clamoring of the metal could be doom for the careless. Therefore, he walked cautiously. His thoughts, however, were still focused on other points.

_They won't even know what hit them! _The words kept buzzing in his head. T-Bone oddly couldn't stifle them.

But, why?

_Jake said something similar at Pumadyne. "I don't know what they've hit us with," or so._

He stopped a few meters behind a crossing, searching for an association.

_There's the reason for your worries, Chance: It was another lie! Of course, he knew what hit us. Jake must have constructed that beam; it was specially built to affect the TurboKat! It doesn't work on the Enforcer jets. Else, they would have mounted it on this ship, and I'd have never reached the runway! You've been utterly blind, Chance!_

But, there was more to it, his intuition told him. An important point still eluded him.

Under his mask, Chance's face was a horrendous scowl. Jake's betrayal ached his mind, and the fact that he couldn't focus on what seemed to be a significant detail added to the ire. T-Bone growled mutely. What had he failed to see…?

A sudden sound behind him made him turn on his heels.

_What…?_

A shoulder slammed into his chest, and T-Bone found himself flying backward through the corridor.

***

Jake was already on the move again when he deactivated the communicator on his glovatrix.

With the surprising arrival of the Delta Squadron, he had wanted to watch the welfare of Turmoil's plan and the struggle of the Mega Squadron from the command center, although he couldn't have changed a thing up there.

Actually, he sought the closeness to Turmoil.

But, this mysterious Enforcer pilot was more urgent a matter.

_Turmoil talked about a 'he', but why does the pilot have to be male?_

There was only one Enforcer Jake thought capable of getting this close to the aircraft: Lieutenant Felina Feral.

_I just hope it isn't her._

Lt. Feral was the rare type of Enforcer who had thanked the SWAT Kats for their actions from time to time. In fact, she had been the only Enforcer who'd ever done this. The image of fighting Felina made him queasy somehow.

_Snap out of your nostalgia, Clawson. You didn't have any problems with killing a defenseless Hard Drive, you're going to destroy Enforcer HQ, you'll turn the kats trapped inside into living burning torches, and now you're worried about facing a soldier who'll try to stop you at all costs._

_You're a cold-blooded murderer, remember?_ he thought gloomily.

It didn't make those distressing doubts go away, though. 

_I want the Enforcers destroyed for what they did to me! So why can't these worries just *LEAVE ME ALONE*?!_

Jake's face was a stormy sea of battling emotions as he walked further down the corridors and toward the hangar.

Deep in thoughts, he almost missed him.

He looked to the left, just in time to see a shadow vanish in the outermost parallel corridor on the way to the command center.

_The Enforcer!_

Jake carefully hurried after the kat. Almost at the bend, he noticed that the intruder's steps had ceased. His own steps, by contrast, seemed suddenly loud to his ears.

_Crud… That's the disadvantage of the uniform: marching in boots is louder than walking barefoot!_

Instinctively, he did the only thing that came to his mind. He attacked! Running around the corner, Jake tackled the Enforcer shoulder-first.

Jake went to the ground, as did his enemy. The massive thrust had flung him a good ten feet away.

Jake stood up, his vision a blur before it refocused. The Enforcer before him was…

_T-Bone?!_

***

T-Bone landed hard but managed to get back to his feet instantly.

The look on his adversary's face was pure shock.

Nevertheless, it took the tabby a moment to make the connection.

_Oh, it's Flight Commander now, is it, Jake?_ The image wasn't exactly helpful for him to calm down.

"But… But, you are dead!" Jake stuttered, stumbling back and falling onto his rear.

"Oh, that's why you're all dressed in black! Are you mourning my death, *Flight Commander*? Sorry, Jake, I have to disappoint you. Your excellent betrayal conspiracy failed! I'm not as dead as you want!"

All the same, Jake's words and surprised reaction made him hesitate for a split-second. 

_Yes, I should have died at Pumadyne! But, I crossed Razor's plan…_

There was that feeling again… T-Bone couldn't shake off the impression that there was more to the events at Pumadyne. Something he had missed… Yet again, he couldn't get a grip on it. One thing repressed anything else:

Jake's treachery.

"You wasted our friendship away, and for what? Look, you're Turmoil's little mascot now, swaggering around in a nice black uniform, but what did you really gain?

NOTHING!

Tell me, why did you do all this? Why, for the Holy Kats' sake, *why*?"

He walked up to the form on the ground, tightening his fists.

"Maybe I'm fed up to the back teeth with playing the stupid assistant to an egocentric wanna-be-an-immortal-hero pilot!" Jake hissed.

With an unbelievable speed and agility, Jake pushed himself into a handstand and performed a roundhouse kick with his booted right foot.

The boot's sole caught T-Bone at the left side of his face, from the jaw to his uncovered ear, sending him tumbling back. His ear rang and throbbed.

The coppery taste of blood filled T-Bone's mouth. He had almost bitten off his tongue.

Jake's remark hurt more than a dozen blows, though.

***

The angry expression on T-Bone's face was bloodcurdling, and his acidic speech intensified this image. Jake's own anger heated up and centered on the kat he hated so much. The feelings he had suppressed for so long surfaced again. Everything else was forgotten. There was only one face before his inner eye:

_Chance!_

Jake made a back flip that brought him up from his hands and to his feet in one swift motion.

He used the break in T-Bone's defense to attack.

"I'm sick of you!"

He slashed out, claws long unsheathed on a subconscious impulse.

T-Bone stumbled back clumsily. Three parallel red lines appeared on his left upper arm.

T-Bone looked at him aghast.

_Don't think I'll leave it at this, Chance!_

"I'm sick of your hotshot piloting, of your heartlessness, of your secrets, of your lies!"

Slash, slash, slash, and slash.

More rips striped T-Bone's uniform. On his arms, his shoulder, and mostly on his chest. T-Bone couldn't react fast enough to his moves. Already, he was bleeding from more than a dozen wounds.

"I'm…" Jake started, striking out once more.

T-Bone grabbed his arm with strong hands that threatened to break his wrist despite the fact that he was wearing the glovatrix.

"…sick. I noticed!" T-Bone forestalled him.

T-Bone kicked Jake in the stomach. Jake gasped more at the surprise than at the pain as the air left his lungs.

Sucking the air in greedily, although it burned fiercely, he shook the wooziness away. He was sitting on the floor six feet away, though he couldn't remember falling.

***

T-Bone watched the form on the floor with cold eyes, the last embers of Chance doused with Jake's accusations.

"Yeah, you're love sick!

Jake's eyes said more than thousand words.

T-Bone snorted disparagingly, stepping forward. "Great job, pal. The shy, sensitive Jake Clawson cracked up to get into bed with a crazy megalomaniac she-kat!"

Jake tensed at T-Bone's words. He snarled.

"You miserable rat! How could you ever call yourself a friend? You don't even know what the word 'buddy' means!

I was a fool to make all the efforts with the TurboKat so you'd die valiantly at Pumadyne.

You are no shining hero, Chance, and you've never been one! Nor have you ever been a true friend!"

"YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT FRIENDSHIP? DO YOU ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT FRIENDSHIP IS, *PARTNER*?

I saved your tail at Pumadyne, Jake! The canopy locked up shortly after that beam hit us. If I hadn't ejected you straight away, you would have broken your neck on the canopy on ejecting!

AND I DID THIS BECAUSE I WANTED TO SAVE MY FRIEND!

Had I known your game, had I known you for the *turncoat* that you are, I would have *TIED* you to your seat to go down with your lies and two-facedness instead!

Tell me, Jake, how did Hard Drive react as he caught a glimpse of your real face? Was he afraid of what he saw? Did he beg for mercy at you to not kill him?

WAS IT EVEN MORE FUN FRYING HIM WHEN HE WAS BEGGING FOR HIS LIFE ON HIS KNEES?" T-Bone spat mordantly. 

"YOU BASTARD!" Jake jumped to his feet quick as flash and grabbed T-Bone at his G-suit and flung him over his shoulder.

T-Bone fell onto his backside and pushed himself back into a stand.

***

The indication about Hard Drive had wounded Jake more than all the blows he'd previously received from T-Bone taken together. Jake bared his fangs.

He ran up on his opponent and threw a left hook that T-Bone deflected effortlessly. This block opened T-Bone's right side to his attack, and he rammed his right elbow into T-Bone's chest in the next moment. While T-Bone struggled for breath, Jake drove his knee up to his midriff, making the burly tom double over. Another kick to his torso sent T-Bone down the corridor.

"Hard Drive was nothing more than a slimy creep who lusted for money! He would have given away my plans about Turmoil's breakout if he saw profit in it, and I couldn't risk that. He injured many innocent kats in his robberies; for that, he finally got what he deserved!" yelled Jake with a fever in his eyes that belied the genuineness of his belief in his words.

_He deserved it! He was a dangerous criminal, a menace to society! He deserved it…_

_I didn't want to…_

T-Bone was on his knees, leaning on his right palm to steady himself. At Jake's words, his head shot up.

"TURMOIL! Your every second sentence is about her. Don't you see it? This is all Turmoil's doing; she corrupted you! SHE *USES* YOU, JAKE! But, I'll cross her plans." 

Jake narrowed his eyes. "TURMOIL HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS!" _You know well enough she hasn't!_ "LEAVE HER OUT OF THIS, CHANCE! THIS IS BETWEEN YOU AND ME!"

"SHE…" 

"ENOUGH," Jake screamed. "Your false play ends here and now!" 

With this, he stormed up at T-Bone and jumped at him with a karate kick.

***

T-Bone panted as if he'd run a marathon. Breathing was extremely difficult, and he staggered back onto his feet like an old kat.

Exhausted, he only managed to hop a step back and to the right and to duck slightly. His thoughts, though, still made somersaults.

All of a sudden, he became aware of what he had spat at Jake only moments before.

_The beam hit us! But, Jake constructed that beam! Why was…?_

The boot reached his face.

There was an explosion of stars, and T-Bone was thrown back brutally. His landed headfirst on the metal grates, his skull thankfully protected by the helmet that had also taken the bulk of Jake's blow.

T-Bone rolled a few times over the ground until his momentum ceased some ten meters away. He was sprawled on his stomach, face on fire, blood rushing from his nose in dark streams.

Groggily, T-Bone pushed himself onto his elbows and knees.

_Why was the canopy locked? The bomb bay was likewise locked shut. Jake would have had to share my fate if I hadn't ejected him in time! But, he was mad about that. He *wanted* to stay in the jet to 'control things'!_

_"OH, BUT NOT *YOU*! You had to eject me, so I couldn't control the situation, and then you pulled that stupid plan out of thin air that worked despite all odds."_

_He never expected the canopy to lock up. He thought he'd prepared the TurboKat well enough for me to never find any working rescue plan._

_And, he certainly *did* prepare her well. So, what went wrong…?_

_What…?_

All at once, he was overly aware of the connection he had formerly missed, and more things merged with the finding he had gained. Feral's words sprang up in his mind, and Felina's, and finally - *finally* -, Jake's words and the things he had said and done since Turmoil's escape himself.

From somewhere deep within, a curious mix of feelings broke free. A sound that was neither cry nor laugh and yet at the same time both erupted from T-Bone's throat as it overpowered him.

  


THURSDAY, 10:13 A.M.

"I'm sorry, sir, we're working as fast as we can! There's no way to refuel the jets any faster."

Commander Feral gritted his teeth. The expression on his face was his surname come to life, and the sergeant stumbled a step backwards, breaking into a sweat.

It didn't create wonders, though.

Feral's two-way radio screeched. That would be the 'revived' Lt. Commander Steele, for once a real assistance instead of a pain in the neck, informing him about the evacuation process of the lower levels of Headquarters.

"The Delta Squadron is heavily under fire, sergeant. They need backup or they will be destroyed." _And, Felina with them,_ Ulysses Feral tightened even more at the thought of his niece.

"Without the Delta Squadron, Headquarters is next in line. So, think about that. And, work harder!"

He turned on his heel and left before the sergeant could speak up again. The ground crew was refueling the first jets of the Alpha Squadron, and communication was impossible next to their working grounds. The hubbub of soldiers and refueling gear deafened anything else.

Feral walked down the airstrip, away from the noise. The wind had stirred up and was tugging at his trenchcoat with its invisible tentacles. He put the radio to his head and pushed the broadcast button.

"Feral here! Have the lower floors been cleared, Steele?"

"Sir," a voice that did not belong to Steele but to the commanding tower officer answered him. He had an edge to his voice. "Five enemy jets have begun on a course toward Headquarters."

That alone quenched any optimism about the status of the Delta Squadron. A thousand questions shot through Feral's mind, Felina's safety being the subject superimposing them all. But, a hundred other questions were more significant than his personal interests, and there was not likely enough time left to ask every single one.

"When will they be within firing range?"

"In two minutes. At the most!"

Commander Feral closed his eyes. He hated the order he was about to give. But, he had no choice.

Time was up.

"Abandon the tower at once. I'll clear the runway and the hangar. We evacuate!"

Dignity was discarded on his way back to the ground crew. Commander Feral ran as fast as he could, stumbling and nearly falling after stepping onto his long trench coat. When he approached the jets of the Alpha Squadron, his sprint had caught the attention of half his crew already.

"WE'RE BEING ATTACKED. GET OFF THE ROOF!" he bellowed, wildly gesticulating.

The reaction was an instantaneous stampede of soldiers. Dozens of kats threw away their tools, jumped down from wings as they tried to reach the safety promised by the staircase entrance as soon as possible.

"Sir, what about the jets and the kerosene tanks? There's enough liquid up here to blast the hangar to shreds."

Feral turned to the kat who had addressed him. Many of his Enforcers just experienced the effects of a mass panic, so this calm mind was good to remember in the future.

"All the more a reason to hurry, lieutenant. Delta Squadron is beaten. There's nothing we can do."

The lieutenant's eyes bulged, and she nodded. She turned and made a few steps toward the exit, then stopped and faced the Commander again.

"Sir…?" she just asked, but Feral knew what she had wanted to say.

"I'm coming the instant all Enforcers have left the roof, and no second before, lieutenant. Now, go! That's an order!"

He looked back to the sky before he could see the lieutenant salute reluctantly, falling in line with the masses jamming the staircase entrance.

Turmoil's Mega Squadron was so close that their jets were visible with the naked eye. The two minutes were almost gone.

Commander Feral let his gaze sweep over the hangar. All the stations were deserted, the crew members either some floors below already or on their best way to get there.

_Even if they destroy the jets and the hangar, at least *we* will make it,_ Feral found a little comfort in this, before he realized that the Mega Squadron had gotten company. Where previously there had been five dots, Feral could now make out ten.

_What…?_ He stared at the enemies bewildered for a moment. The answer came to him as he saw that the five smaller points were rushing in at a higher velocity than the others.

_Missiles!_

Feral stood transfixed to his place. Shock had him in its clutches. Only after a moment, his rationale kicked in, and he started to run.

To his surprise, the door to the roof stood closed. The assembled ground crew had passed it already, and it had closed automatically thereafter. Feral pushed against it with all his weight, forcing the door open with an excess of strength that made him almost tumble down the staircase. He jumped down the stairs two at a time, three at a time, hastened around the first bend, down the next pair of stairs, around the second bend, and then the first missile crashed into the hangar, blowing up a half-refueled Alpha Squadron jet.

The following chain reaction was tremendous. Its blast tore the door from its anchoring and slammed it at the opposite wall. A fireball rolled into the staircase with a brutish roar. Feral was flung down the next pair of stairs, and hit the wall headfirst with the right side of his head, just where T-Bone had punched him. A massive headache erupted with a fury.

A staggering, limping Commander Feral continued his descent. Above him, the last missiles hit the roof, shaking the building as if it were made of jelly. Feral lost his balance again and tumbled down the stairs, cursing upon his landing.

He got on his feet again, but though he could be glad to have outlasted the explosion, he couldn't dam his swearing. Just a look up the staircase told the sad story of the fiasco.

The fate of Enforcer Headquarters was sealed.

  


THURSDAY, 10:15 A.M.

Jake was perplexed – there was no other word for it. He had expected anything but this.

A mélange of emotions hushed over the face of the kneeling masked tabby. Rage mixed with confusion, was driven out by concern and fear, accompanied by something extremely odd that Jake could only interpret as… joy… or hope…? And, this all got lost as T-Bone's body started to twitch. 

T-Bone cried.

It frightened Jake. And, it worried him.

_What the heck is going on? I've never seen T-Bone like this before. He never cries! He is…_

Jake's anger returned with a vengeance. T-Bone lay beaten and defenseless before him, and he stood rooted to the spot just because he'd gotten a peek at T-Bone's weak side.

_More likely, that's only a performance. He wants to distract me! You don't fool me, bud!_

Jake resumed his step with a new determination.

***

With the haze vision of moist eyes, T-Bone saw Jake stepping into a walk. He sobered as alarm wiped away his other feelings. He was sprawled on the ground exposed while his greatest enemy ever was doing his best to kill him.

And, from how he felt, T-Bone doubted he could withstand Jake long in fight.

Something close to panic welled up in him. As he had just realized, there was more at stake than he had thought. Much, *much* more!

T-Bone tried to push himself up. In this motion, he felt the unusual weight on his chest.

_The bombs I took from the other uniform,_ he remembered. _They're still in my pocket!_

A tinny voice added to the noise of Jake's footsteps.

"Turmoil to Flight Commander. We're nearing Headquarters. The bomb has to be moved now. Did you find any sign of an intruder?"

With Jake for the moment preoccupied, T-Bone dropped his plan of rising and instead hurried to reach into his pocket.

_It's time to blast this maniac to his senses!_

He grabbed one of the bombs along with the remote, let the latter fall into his left hand and threw the bomb at Jake with the other hand.

His thumb slammed down on the button of the detonator remote.

***

Jake didn't answer Turmoil's call. Seven meters still separated him from T-Bone when he suddenly saw T-Bone fling something at him.

On any other kat, T-Bone's surprise would have worked out, but Jake reacted with the swift reflexes he'd gained in his SWAT Kat years.

He instinctively kicked the object back at T-Bone.

The bomb blew up between the two of them. In open space, its detonation was quite considerable.

There was a loud moan of the ship's hull, and Jake felt a wave of heat rush up at him before the explosion's blast hurled him back down the corridor.

When he looked up again, a strong wind caressed his facial fur. Beginning where he had stood a moment ago, the ground and the wall to his right were gone for the next ten meters. A hole in the hull had opened that ended roughly three meters behind the position where T-Bone had lain in the end.

He was gone!

"Turmoil to Flight Commander…"

Jake stood up and investigated the gap with his glovatrix raised, expecting to see a falling T-Bone and a sliver of MegaKat City beneath him. Instead, he saw an unbroken field of dirty white. The ship was still above the cloudbanks, so near that he could almost touch the moist clouds.

_T-Bone! *DAMN!* _

"Flight Commander…"

Jake looked down onto the clouds, mesmerized, until Turmoil's voice awoke him from his spell.

"Jake?" Her voice was full of concern.

"I'm here!"

"What's going on down there?" Her tone of command came back.

Jake hesitated with his answer. _Chance, that's what's goin' on! I have to confess this to Turmoil. But… rather not now. I wonder how he survived. I just hope she believes me it wasn't a set-up of mine!_

"The intruder had me occupied for the moment. I tossed him over board."

_The first kick from this ship hasn't killed him. Neither will this. Chance is alive. But, at least he won't be able to stop us from erasing Headquarters…_

_Oh… *Crud*, his glovatrix!_

"Then what…"

"I'll prepare the bomb now," he cut Turmoil off.

Jake hurried back to the hangar, deeply troubled. _She *must* believe me!_

  


THURSDAY, 10:15 A.M.

"Flight Commander…

FLIGHT COMMANDER…!" Turmoil spoke into a dead mike, at a complete loss at what to make out of Jake's behavior.

There had been something in his voice… A slight pause before his words, and between his sentences. Hesitation… Why?

She leaned back in her chair, attacking the leather armrests with her claws. She retracted them, unsheathed them again – an unconscious reflex. Her chair was torn to pieces, parts of its stuffing strewn over her uniform.

_Jake wouldn't lie to me about the Enforcer pilot. So, he threw him overboard. But, why did he hesitate…?_

"ETA at Enforcer Headquarters in ten minutes," Lt. Pergell informed her.

_Good, _she thought, trying to concentrate on the operation again.

The Enforcer pilot was removed from board, their jets no menace any longer and HQ was as weak as a newborn kitten. Nothing could stop her from getting her revenge on the Enforcers.

Then… why had that knot in her gut returned?

  


THURSDAY, 10:15 A.M.

"I CAN'T SHAKE HIM OFF!"

_That's two of us!_ Felina thought sourly, evading the enemy laser volleys with a sudden drop.

Lt. Feral was infuriated. Her main objective to prevent Turmoil's pilots from attacking Headquarters had turned into an unmanageable task when the Mega Squadron had entangled them in a dogfight between the brick-and-steel canyons of MegaKat City. 

There, the outstanding flying abilities of Turmoil's pilots had shown. Two out of previously twelve high-developed Enforcer jets were the puny remnants of the Delta Squadron. The other ten ships were only junk now, blown to pieces or crashed from the sky. The Mega Squadron had them outnumbered 7:2. And, as if to tease her, the five surplus pilots had left immediately, continuing on their way to Headquarters.

Turmoil had rated her and Lt. Taylor a minor threat for which two pilots were sufficient to ban.

_And, she was right!_

The thought touched a wound point in her. To lose and to be mocked didn't go well with a Feral character.

But, there was no denying: The two pilots had them occupied, and Felina could only watch the other five dots vanish from the radar.

She hadn't even managed to warn Headquarters of the new danger. In the heat of combat, Felina had been too busy to switch communication bands. Only half a minute ago, she had risked a spare second for this action, and it had gained her a nasty laser scorch on her canopy.

Enforcer Headquarters transmitted no more. On its band, there was the eerie silence of static.

It was an indubitable fact: Turmoil's pilots had reached an unshielded Headquarters.

She had failed.

At present, Turmoil's five other pilots would be coming back. Felina knew she wouldn't stand a chance against the whole lot of them.

But, she swore under her breath to take as many of them with her as she could.

Felina made a sharp turn at the next crossing, and found Lieutenant Taylor flying in front of her, followed by the second jet of the Mega Squadron.

Lt. Taylor's flying impressed her. He had taken down two jets and shown superb reflexes in his maneuvers. But, after being relentlessly chased for minutes, he was on the brink of panic. He had referred to the enemy pilot as a tom. It was a bad sign. Soon, he would commit a mistake that would also be his last.

Felina's pursuer came diving around the block. Now, the four jets were flying in a line, like pearls on a necklace.

_So much about shaking off my shadow!_

Lt. Feral aimed at the enemy before her and fired, but Turmoil's pilot evaded her laser volleys with ease and let off a volley of her own that found its mark on the fuselage of Lt. Taylor's jet.

It started to shake badly.

"OH… NO, OH NO… NO…" Gregory's words were almost unintelligible. 

As bitter as it was, Felina had to give Turmoil's pilots credit for their talent. She had thought herself to be an excellent pilot. These she-kats made her feel clumsy; her reflexes seemed wooden by comparison. It was nearly impossible to avoid being roasted from behind and to shoot down a superior enemy in front at the same time.

_If I could only predict their moves…_

_Maybe I can!_

"Lt. Taylor, eject now!" she screamed into her radio.

"BUT…"

"DON'T ASK! DO IT! *NOW*!"

This time, Greg didn't answer, and Felina saw his canopy slide back as he ejected.

She inhaled deeply to calm herself. Then, she did the only thing mad enough to surprise Turmoil's pilot.

Not a second after Lt. Taylor had left his jet with his seat, Felina fired at her teammate's pilot-less plane.

Her second salvo hit the fuel tanks, and the ship blew up like nothing.

The unexpected support really caught the pilot ahead of her unaware. Restricted by the row of houses to the right, Turmoil's lieutenant had only the option of breaking out to the left to avoid the explosion. This led her directly into Felina's line of fire.

Felina had her finger on the trigger already.

A second explosion bellowed in the streets. Lt. Feral cheered as she passed through the wall of fire.

"One down, one to go!"

Her enemy showed what she thought of her words by answering with some angry laser volleys. Felina dodged them only with the greatest of difficulties.

Suddenly, the canyon led into a great plaza before her, with only a one-way street leading away on the other side of the square. The houses to its side stood too close together for a fighter jet with a wingspan of 7 meters to fly horizontally.

Flying vertically down a small street with no chance whatsoever to evade a following enemy would be a suicide mission…

Nonetheless, Felina brought her jet into a vertical.

And, behind her, Turmoil's pilot mimicked her upright flying style to follow an easy prey into the small canyon.

The crucial point was: Felina hadn't reached the canyon yet. Despite her strange position, she grabbed between her knees and pulled the ejector loop.

Felina was flung out of her jet with her seat in the brink of a second, while her plane continued on, racing into the narrow canyon, followed by her enemy. Without its pilot, the Enforcer jet started to rotate, and finally the tip of the wings connected with the rows of houses. Resistance brought the jet to an immediate stop. Turmoil's lieutenant couldn't evade.

The hunter slammed into the hunted.

Both ships blew up.

Of all this, Felina didn't perceive a tad anymore.

Her scheme included the tiny flaw of her ejector seat having the momentum of high speed, due to her jet's fast flight. The impetus drove it straight on as well, but as she had ejected vertically, she was also transported to the side, and there, houses barred the way.

Right from the start, Felina knew things would be getting close with her crazy stunt. Now, she realized it would be *too* close.

The skyscraper to her side was growing larger and larger, its brick wall starting to swallow everything else. She would meet it!

_It's up to you, T-Bone! Get th…_

She collided with the protected right side of her seat's backrest, but the impact was remorseless nonetheless, her helmed head thumping against the brickwork.

A sweltering pain shot up her spine, exploded in her skull. The world turned upside-down, with the plaza suddenly *above* her and her seat falling *upwards*, and then blackness consumed her pain, her worrisome situation, and young Enforcer pilot Lieutenant Felina Feral knew no more.

* * *

***To be continued - in "Going Down"***

Inspirational music:

Jessica Folker's _"How will I know (who you are)"_

Nick Mancina's _"Choppers" (sic!) / "Entering Airport" / "City Streets"_ for T-Bone's airfight


	5. Part 5: Going Down

  


TITLE:

NEMESIS 5 - GOING DOWN

AUTHOR:

Helion

BEGIN OF WRITING:

July 24, 2001

FINISHED WRITING:

June 15, 2002

FINAL CHECKING:

June 16, 2002

EMAIL:

helion.regret@gmx.net

RATING / WARNINGS:

PG-13 occasional, moderate language and some violence / some drama in overall story

SYNOPSIS:

The stakes have been raised. T-Bone realizes that the destruction of Enforcer Headquarters would mean much more than to simply suffer defeat. He can still cross Turmoil's plans, but the Flight Commander is also prepared this time.

LEGAL NOTICE:

'SWAT Kats - The Radical Squadron' and the characters of the show are the property of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

The obvious thing first: this is Part 5 of 6, which means I'm closing in on the end… As usual, thanks to all of you for bearing with me and for reviewing the first four parts.   
A very special thanks goes to Mareike for her overall support. ¡Muchas gracias! (Yes, I know you might strangle me for that phrase if you find out about it. I'll risk it anyway!)

  


* * *

NEMESIS - PART 5: GOING DOWN

* * *

"Then let's go out in a blaze of glory!"

-- T-Bone in _Metal Urgency_

* * *

"You were right, T-Bone. Looks like we *are* going out in a blaze of glory!"

-- Razor in _Metal Urgency_

* * *

  


THURSDAY, 10:17 A.M.

"AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH…"

T-Bone's shoulder started to tremble. His muscles were overexerted, cramping. His left hand slipped from the hull plate again, and he managed to find hold with his claws on another joint only at the very last instant.

The ship was sinking into the clouds, and fine pearls of dew began to form on the cold metal as the water condensed. It made his stowaway ride even more difficult.

T-Bone hung upside-down under the fuselage of Turmoil's ship, his feet and hands somehow clinging to the plate joints with a fervor. He could see the long gash that had opened in its hull on the explosion some five meters in front of his head when he pressed his chin to the metal, which made him almost lose his grip again. The blast-made opening was increasingly shrouded in mist. T-Bone waited for the moment it would be completely swallowed by it.

When the explosion had blown the corridor ground and him away, he had clung to the hull plates reflexively as the world around him rushed him by. But, after the first shock had dissipated, he realized that Jake would have an easy target if he let go of the joints. He would drop a good hundred meters before he could activate his backpack boosters, plenty of time to get roasted by one of Jake's glovatrix missiles.

But, Jake couldn't fire at what he couldn't see. The moment the mist of the clouds was so dense that his line of sight was below ten meters, T-Bone allowed his sore muscles to relax.

He fell off the ship.

The control handles extended from his rucksack as he warmed up the boosters. He had to get to the hangar before Jake, and he would make it too, thanks to his backpack. Flying outside the ship was fast. 

No sooner had he broken through the clouds than a sudden jolt dragged him upwards again. The jetpack had sprung into life. T-Bone shot up, but, before he could steer towards the runway, it stuttered and went out again.

With horror, T-Bone realized that ignition had used up the last drops of fuel.

_Crud, I used all the gas to reach the beach!_ The first hours after Jake's betrayal were still just a dim memory to the tabby, and he had missed the warnings on his display on the morning. But, knowing *now* wouldn't help him either.

T-Bone discarded his plans of flying to the airstrip and raised his glovatrix arm. He fired blindly into the cloud, at the position where he thought the gap in Turmoil's ship to be.

The grappling cable shot away and attached itself somewhere on the ship. T-Bone activated the winch. The cable rolled up, hauling him along and into the grey cloudbank.

Inside the storm clouds, his sight was next to nil. From the corner of his eyes, T-Bone saw the breach in the hull, and immediately deactivated the winch.

He had misjudged his aim. The position he'd aimed for was about seven meters to his right, and he had aimed two or three meters too high. But, the clamps of the grappling hook were bending under his weight already, so he hadn't an adequate amount of time to change his position.

T-Bone pushed himself away from the ship's hull with his feet, using it like a rock face. The cable began to swing from the left to the right, and the tabby thrust his weight in with the movement to widen the arc. He swung to the right, then to the left, and again to the right, a bit further this time. The cable pulled him back to the left, and T-Bone pushed himself away from the wall with all his might as the cable swung back to the right.

Letting go of the grappling hook from his glovatrix, T-Bone jumped.

His forward momentum conquered the missing meters to the breach, and he landed on the outmost base plate with the upper half of his body, sliding back. The sum of his own weight and his backpack lugged him out of the ship again.

T-Bone grabbed for a stable hold to stop his slide. Pain shot through his arm as he pressed his right hand onto a sharp explosion-made edge. Regardless of the pain, he tightened his grip. It stabilized his position.

Ignoring his throbbing hand, T-Bone pushed himself up on board, his face a dire scowl. He had gained another wound, but also a second chance…

  


THURSDAY, 10:19 A.M.

The exquisite mahogany door opened unfittingly ponderous and with a screech.

Deputy Mayor Calico Briggs strode into Mayor Manx's office, just to find an empty chair at his desk, the golf balls on the lush red-brown carpet forlorn.

Placing the thick pile of newspapers on the middle of the Mayor's shiningly polished desk plate, two reports she'd written early today on top so he *couldn't* possibly miss them, she turned to leave when a muted sound brought her to a sudden stop.

It sounded like… teeth clattering.

"Mayor Manx?" she asked, looking around at the luxuriously furbished room of the head figure of MegaKat City, located on the highest level of City Hall, alone on the floor except for her own office, a small canteen and restrooms flooded with classical music from speakers in the ceiling.

The noise ceased. "Ca… Callie? Callie… Is that you?"

"Yes, Mayor," she answered, stepping forward.

An olive, not-possible-to-kill room palm stood solemnly in front of the large row of windows. Behind the plant she found him teetering, cowered on his knees. His head didn't turn as usual to seek comfort in her presence.

Fixed it was, banned, and Callie couldn't help but to wish it were the unique and magnificent outlook down on this living city that had him overwhelmed. To the horizon, building rose beside building, single sunrays fighting their way through the clouds reflected playfully on the many façades of glass and steel. In combination with the parks that veined the city grounds with green oasis, it made for an indescribable beauty.

But, wishes were seldom fulfilled. Callie knew not the exceptional sight made the Mayor lethargic. Due to long-time experience, her senses snapped to alert, and, reluctantly, she loosened her gaze on the city. She followed the spot Manx stared at…

Falling in shock herself.

The behemoth form of a ship emerged from the clouds on a steady descent, radiating malice. Embraced by the upcoming storm banks it birthed darkness and terror and doom. The splendor of the weather Callie had felt only moments ago was forgotten, ripped apart by this alien vessel.

Dread struggled hard to overpower her. But, Deputy Mayor Callie Briggs wrestled harder to withstand. Yes, to hole up seemed an option, but not likely the best. Her purse back in her office held a far better one.

She turned to go.

"Why…? She dictates no terms, Callie."

Manx was right. No doubt, it was Turmoil descending upon the city like an angry god. The ship looked exactly like her former one, but tiny when compared to the latter.

Callie realized not the ship made her queasy.

It were Turmoil's ridiculous demands she missed. Where was her hologram? Turmoil without terms was… unbelievable.

_A villain is just nasty when there's something he wants. But, what does he look like when you have nothing to offer him? When he has all he desires and only seeks… revenge!_

Deputy Mayor Briggs traced down the imaginary line Turmoil's ship cut on its path and searched for a hint at where it would end.

From outside the windows of the Mayor's office at City Hall, one would have seen the distorted form of proud Enforcer Headquarters loom up suddenly on Callie's glasses. One would have seen the answer dawning on her in her emerald eyes, and the shade of grey that crept onto her angelic face.

When she headed for the door, she didn't care she was running.

"I don't know, Mayor. But, I will find out."

  


THURSDAY, 10:19 A.M.

A red teardrop fell to the metal floor. Then, another. And, a third.

A constant trickle accompanied T-Bone, dripping from the fingertips of his right hand. A regular dribble…

…of blood.

The thumb-long cut on his palm had been a small price for getting back on board. In worse cases, the sharp-edged rest of the hull plates would have chopped off some fingers or even his whole hand. However, it was a deep gash. One inch lower on his forearm, and it would have slashed his artery.

T-Bone was oblivious to the wound, numb to the pain. His swift walk down the forsaken corridor seemed like a daze, and it was true that wrath made him stagger on. But, now fear mingled with his scorn, held him in its clutches.

Terror. Mortal dread.

To run – there was *nothing* T-Bone would have done more preferably. But, to rush might give him away. Even the stealthiest kat made noises on hurrying. A fast walk was difficult enough when silence was the collaborator he couldn't dare losing. Turmoil's squadron was off-board, but only an idiot would forget the other three or four crewmembers. Only a total fool would put Turmoil out of his mind.

T-Bone's mouth became a thin line as he remembered his bad luck of the last days. He would walk. Better not doing anything stupid that might attract notice. Still, walking to the hangar was nerve rattling. Time was precious, and it was slipping away under his fingers.

How much of a start did Jake have on him on getting to their jet?

The TurboKat – black-red shining banner of the SWAT Kats. What would they be without her, or – the other way around – what would they need the jet for when their days as heroes were over?

It was symbolic. The SWAT Kats weren't truly dead if the TurboKat still existed. Dead, and yet alive. A crash at Pumadyne would have destroyed her. And, him. A devoted death; the SWAT Kats going down with their beloved jet. Nothing left for the citizens to believe in their immortality any longer.

Of course, an investigation would have shown that only one body was seated in the cockpit, but before the Enforcers would have come so far in their researches as to realize this, the attack would have brought the investigation to a stop. Enforcer Headquarters reduced to rubbles by the explosives stolen at Pumadyne would have stopped roughly *everything*.

But, *their* TurboKat made it through the set-up in one piece, and with her, the SWAT Kats survived. Now the jet on board of her ship must be a thorn in Turmoil's side, as it was in Jake's. 

T-Bone had missed it. He had seen that the jet was connected to the transportation rail. Just attached to make way for the squadron's jets had been his spontaneous idea at the sight, fogged as it had been by his seeking for revenge. Yet, it was fastened so it could be shoved to and over the edge of the airstrip.

The tabby fumed at his own rage-caused stupidity.

What would fit better as a container for the explosives to wipe out Headquarters than this emblem of the SWAT Kats, both at the same time allies and enemies of the Enforcers?

Nothing would!

It was all so symbolic. It was all so simple. It was all so unbelievably absurd.

And, it would work out perfectly should he come too late.

His pace was so *darn* slow.

***

T-Bone winced as he pushed the button. The hiss of the hangar door opening seemed much too loud in his ears. But, for once, luck was on his side. The distant roar of thunder echoed in the hangar, drowned out his intrusion. He carefully stepped into the bay, the door forgotten before long.

_Jake._ There he was, beside the TurboKat. T-Bone came just in time to get a quick look at the barrels with the explosive gel before the jet's closing bomb bay door hid its deadly freight. The Flight Commander operated a hangar instrument panel not far away, and some powerful hidden engine working the transportation rail dragged the jet into movement. It was soon transported at a steady pace, bit by bit out of the hangar.

Unmoving, Jake remained next to the panel. He held a remote control in his hand. It was the backup plan to detonate the jet in case the drop and impact alone wouldn't ignite the explosives, T-Bone realized at once. In that case, Jake would trigger the explosion by radio signal. Thoroughly planned, as Jake would do this. 

Anger built up in T-Bone again, and he willingly let it take control. He would not let this madkat destroy the TurboKat!

So, they had assumed him dead. Else, - symbol or not – they wouldn't have placed the explosives in a jet he could gain access to that easily. If he made it off board inside the TurboKat, Turmoil and Jake couldn't take vengeance on Headquarters, and he would have saved their jet at the same time.

For that plan – simply flying off with the TurboKat – held a much higher chance of success than a fight with Jake. Jake was far the better fighter of the two of them. What Jake lacked in strength, he made up for with dexterity and precision. It was almost impossible for T-Bone to overwhelm Jake under normal circumstances; he could forget about victory in his current condition.

The only thing still to be taken care of was the remote. He had to get a grip on it…

He looked around. Razor's discarded backpack lay solemnly in a dark corner to his left. T-Bone crept the dozen steps toward it, never taking his eyes from Jake's back. He had just lifted it from the ground and begun to ponder on how to get near Jake without losing the moment of surprise when it started…

With a shrill wail, the TurboKat's klaxon went off and announced Callie's calling.

Jake looked up at the cockpit out of a surprised reflex.

T-Bone grinned. _Time to shuffle the cards anew!_

And, *finally*, he started to run.

The TurboKat's autonomous behavior was nothing to enthrall Jake for long, but it distracted him for a short moment, and that was all T-Bone needed to get closer.

"Hey, Jake!" With full force, T-Bone threw the backpack.

Jake whirled around. Before he could react, the heavy rucksack slammed into him, sending him flying to the floor, the remote skittering away over the metal grates.

"Did you miss me, *bud*?"

T-Bone transformed his straight line toward Jake into a slight curve that lead to the remote control. He fetched it from the ground on passing by, never really stopping for a moment. The dangerous detonator in his hand, he dashed on, flexed his leg muscles for a powerful physical exertion, pushed a glovatrix's button and concentrated on the cockpit.

On his command, the canopy began to close.

He leaped.

His long, precise jump ended in the pilot's chair half a second before the canopy closed completely. T-Bone began switching levers and pressing buttons to initialize the TurboKat's start-up sequence, ignoring the siren.

With the agility of a warrior, Jake got back on his feet. His expression darkened visibly and a growl formed in his throat.

T-Bone spared him a short glance and swiftly locked the canopy from within. "Sorry, I won't let you carry out your dumb-witted baloney."

"Why, T-Bone? You of all kats should understand me." Even inside the closed canopy, Jake's voice was loud. He was on the brink of screaming.

"Understand you? You're about to wipe out the Enforcers! How should I ever understand that? It's…"

"They destroyed our lives, Chance! We only wanted to protect the citizens. Feral knocked us down out of sheer egoism."

"Oh yeah, and you're different, Jake. Altruistic. Your intentions are noble and just." Sarcasm lay heavily in every screamed word as T-Bone's anger won over his rational side.

"That's why you wanted to kill me. 'Cause you're so damn altruistic!

I understand you've flipped in your wish for revenge. FLIPPED!" He finished on the last buttons for the cockpit instruments and turned the engines on, sending trembles through the jet as they warmed up.

"YOU LITTLE RAT! YOU UNDERSTAND ME WELL ENOUGH! ALL YOU MEAN TO DO IS TO DESTROY MY LUCK!"

"YOUR *LUCK*? YOUR LUCK MEANS SUFFERING FOR MANY KATS OUT THERE. WELL, IF THAT'S YOUR DEFINITION OF LUCK THEN YOU'RE RIGHT: I WILL DESTROY IT AT ANY COSTS!"

Jake narrowed his eyes. "YOU FILTHY MONGREL!"

T-Bone didn't care any more. The start-up sequence was completed. He evaluated the strength of the steel cable that yanked his TurboKat along the transportation rail embedded in the airstrip. It would never hold up against the jet's force. 

"Yeah, whatever! Bye, Jake!"

He gripped the joystick and pushed the thrusters to max.

The engines and the instruments appeared to be on two different jets as the TurboKat showed no reaction to T-Bone's labors.

_Déjà vu._ Razor's saying sprang into his mind apathetically. T-Bone realized that he had misjudged the situation completely.

In the sudden silence that arose as Callie's despairing calling ceased at last, Jake's voice was thunderous. And, it was bitter.

"I don't think so!"

_He deactivated my control panel,_ T-Bone grasped. _Oh, crud!_

Panic welled up in him, not directly for his own life, but for what the explosion of the TurboKat would mean for the city and for…

_…Jake! Oh, no, JAKE! He'd never kno…_

"Hmm, seems the TurboKat is not operational," Jake mocked. His voice froze from a moment to the next. "That leaves you two choices, T-Bone: you either say inside the cockpit and wait for the end, or you climb out of your hiding place and start to fight like a TOM!"

A nasty smirk on his face, Jake turned his back on the jet indifferently and walked back to the hangar controls.

_If you think I'd do something stupid because of your insults, think again! I won't climb out of the TurboKat._

"You know, Chance," Jake spoke loud, marching on without turning, "if you had told me at Pumadyne that you wanted a solo career, if you had just said it, I would have stopped this. Everything! All it had needed was this little sentence: 'Yes, I want!'"

_Yeah, sure! Your first attempt to kill me just failed, but you would have stopped it all!_ T-Bone thought cynically while he desperately searched for a way to gain the upper side of the situation again.

Jake would notice it if he opened the canopy. Before he'd be out of the cockpit, Jake would be ready for a fight and by no means could he overwhelm Jake in combat. He had to try something different. But what…?

_Why did Jake disable my controls? There was no reason for him to do so; they thought me dead. Yet, he did…_

His heart missed a beat on finding the answer. _He knew I was alive! The TurboKat's canopy stood open when I came into the hangar…_

_Crud! The glovatrix,_ he swore as he realized that, instead of walking to the hangar, he could have moved the TurboKat from the distance via remote all along.

_He must have deactivated the remote control functions of my glovatrix just before I reached the hangar. And, he disabled the jet's controls beside in one clean sweep…_

_The central unit!_

He opened the covering of the control panel before him. Deep within, in semi-darkness, several wires wound their way toward a central unit, from which the electric impulses were passed on throughout the ship on hundreds of circuits.

He could also see some slack wires, not attached to the central unit. And, these wires led back to his controls.

_Gotcha, Jake!_

Jake made it to the rail controls, which were already 20 meters away. "Now I know I'll never get these words from you. Not in a thousand years. What I sought was a simple, short confession."

T-Bone shut him out of his mind. He couldn't reach into the small opening with the glovatrix on his right arm, so he changed the remote control from his left hand to his right, smearing it with his blood.

_I better become left-handed now!_ He reached into the opening with his left, got the first loose wire and fumbled his way to the central unit. The wire was affixed in no time.

"I wanted the truth, or insight, or just a clean parting. What a fool I have been. To believe you'd hear me out. I couldn't make you change, no." Jake reached the rail controls and pulled a lever.

T-Bone's pulse sped up at the success and in his joy he realized too late that Jake doubled the tempo of the transportation rail. The jolt threw him back, and though the wire stayed attached, he ripped off another one by his sudden recoil.

Frantically, T-Bone looked at his controls. There were no warning lights he could find… At last, he noticed static on a monitor. Relief flooded through him. The loss of the X-ray Beam didn't matter for a takeoff. But, he had to be more careful. 'Not significant' wasn't true on a wire connected to the stabilizers or to an elevator. It was no good to get the controls operational again, just to drop like a stone on liftoff.

"Still undecided whether you should get out of the TurboKat? Well now, your time's expiring!" Jake's voice became louder as he neared the TurboKat again.

"I won't fight a henpecked husband," T-Bone shouted back in hopes of keeping him occupied while he cautiously hurried to get the other wires affixed as well.

Jake voiced a hollow laugh. "Even on the brink of death you won't hear me out, won't accept the truth! Very well…

Keep that in mind when you die now, Chance: The truth might hurt, but a lie that doesn't hurt kills underhand. Slowly. Terribly!"

T-Bone fastened another three wires to the central unit. How many were still loose? Two? Three? Four?

"Keep that in mind, Chance!"

Jake crossed the distance to the jet with a powerful jump that brought him onto the far end of the TurboKat's wing. He aimed his glovatrix on the canopy and fired an explosive.

T-Bone leaned away on reflex, but with his left hand firmly stuck couldn't move much. The missile hit the canopy and exploded, ripping a head-sized hole into the structure and sending a spray of glass debris over him. The fragments cut through his uniform and buried into the flesh beneath. The detonation filled the cockpit with an impulsive wave of heat and the remote control slipped out of T-Bone's hand on the blast. It fell onto the floor and bounced away from him.

Ignoring the new flashes of pain, T-Bone turned his head into Jake's direction and swung his glovatrix arm around.

But, his backpack made his whirling clumsy.

Jake was faster.

In a regular burst of fury, he fired his cement machine gun.

Through the hole in the canopy, T-Bone was struck with the fast-drying cement, his right arm pressed down by the sudden force of the impact. Before he could raise it again, the cement dried up, gluing his arm to his body. The only thing T-Bone could still shoot at was his own thigh.

The barrel of the machine gun kept rotating full two seconds before Jake realized the cement was used up and ceased shooting. He didn't lower his glovatrix, though.

Yet, there was no need for Jake to worry. T-Bone was helplessly pinned down.

Speckled in gray and striped red with blood, he was one with his seat; his left arm seemed to end in a stump shortly before his hand. It was buried under a load of cement, still inside the control panel. He had just connected the last loose wires needed to regain the controls, but fixing them was meaningless now.

He had lost.

"Discovered my sabotage, *buddy*? Nice try, but useless," Jake said in a cold voice. 

T-Bone tried to yank his arms free to no avail. The cement cuffing was unbreakable.

"So you have chosen to stay inside the cockpit till the end. Relax, Chance, you'll get the seat of honor for watching Headquarters obliterated. Of course, you'll be a pile of ashes yourself."

Suddenly, the communicator flared up, startling Jake, whose eyes focused on his glovatrix. "Turmoil to Flight Commander." 

T-Bone looked down. The remote control lay near his right foot, some five inches away, but his feet were cemented to the seat like the rest of his body. Only five inches. It could have been five miles as well.

"We'll reach HQ in three minutes. How are things doing?"

Jake's look flashed toward T-Bone, and he carefully drew his glovatrix arm to his body and activated his mike. "Everything's fine," he said, but didn't quite manage to keep the strain from his voice.

Turmoil noticed it, too. "I'm coming dow…"

Jake switched off the link.

Albeit his state of affairs didn't allow it, T-Bone put on his most impish grin. "Told ya… Henpecked husband!"

He received a snarl. "That was your last cocky remark, Chance! Your life ends here and now!" Jake aimed his glovatrix at T-Bone again.

T-Bone tightened his left fist. He couldn't even reach the detonator, couldn't get close to it, couldn't use it as a threat against the Flight Commander. He had to get free of the cement…

There was only one way left to go T-Bone could think of. A peek at escape, or at certain death…

If the detonator remote lay *too* close to his foot…_ Holy Kats, please let this work!_

This was desperation time, but he would under no circumstances let them destroy Enforcer Headquarters with the TurboKat. The jet was all that was left to him, his last strand of hope. And, his plan might mean to cut it away… Just because of *them*; just because of this…

"DON'T YOU REALIZE IT?" he shouted in a rage, "I'VE LOST EVERYTHING THAT'S EVER BEEN PRECIOUS TO ME BECAUSE OF YOUR CRAZY WISH FOR VENGEANCE!

I'VE LOST EVERYTHING! I'VE LOST *JAKE*!"

Jake dropped his arm in surprise at T-Bone's vehemence, and his face acquired a genuinely puzzled look.

T-Bone sobered from his hatred in the blink of an eye. It was seldom for him to see Jake perplexed. This innocent look… he knew it so well. That was *Jake* as he knew him, as he loved him like a brother. His promise sprang up in his mind, the oath he had sworn not much more than three hours ago, though it seemed a lifetime had passed since then.

_"If it's most likely that one of us dies while the other has a chance to escape, I'll beg on my knees your decision to be to save yourself."_

He smiled sadly. He couldn't beg on his knees, but he would hold his promise. Even though it might be the gravest mistake of his life, he would hold it. Looking his enemy deep in the eyes, he spoke softly. "If you want to survive this, you better grab your backpack now, Jake!"

Jake watched T-Bone in disbelief. Chance was in no position to threaten. And yet, there was something in his eyes… a deep, sad longing that filled them. Jake let himself be absorbed by this gaze, his own anger washed away for a moment where time stood still…

His eyes trailed down to the detonator.

Unexpectedly, he understood.

Despite the fact that it was aimed at his own thigh, T-Bone activated his glovatrix and deployed a Mini-Scrambler missile. He clenched his teeth at the stabbing pain that hit him as the missile's three metal clamps drilled into his flesh.

And, this pain was sweet weighed against the pain rising as the missile started to charge him with high voltage.

Jake turned, jumped from the wing and started to run for his backpack.

  


THURSDAY, 10:22 A.M.

Impenetrable fields of clouds greeted the TurboKat as the steel cable dragged the first centimeters of her nose out of the hangar. The storm was over MegaKat City now, the air so thickly filled with static it was almost solid. The last handful of citizens still unaware of Turmoil's attack hurried to get sheltered before the first hard drops of water would turn into a flood.

For Jake, weather was irrelevant. Only time mattered. The remote lay dangerously close to Chance's bare feet. How much time was left until the charge would flash into it…?

From the hangar's opening, the backpack was fifty meters away. Jake dashed as he had never dashed before, snatching the rucksack upon turning. He slung it over his right shoulder, already fast on the move again. He couldn't spare a second to put it on correctly. Away, *fast and far away*, or nothing would help him anymore! 

***

The first cracks opened on his cement confinement. The strength T-Bone obtained in his spasms was very nearly supernatural. The cement around T-Bone's right hand seemed to loosen, but he still couldn't get free of it…

The missile would have stunned most other kats by now, and it still emitted its agonizing power. T-Bone gritted his teeth in his pain, soaked in sweat he fought not to scream. His lungs didn't fill with air; he couldn't breath. As the wish to cry aloud overcame him in his anguish, T-Bone made the harsh experience that his jaw was clamped shut in cramps.

***

Jake rushed on. He was approaching the edge of the airstrip with wide steps. A distant part of him observed the eerie light of electricity that sparkled inside the canopy of the TurboKat like a countdown indicator. It was getting brighter. Jake found the strength to run faster.

***

White. Just white. No other color filled T-Bone's vision when his right hand finally broke free.

Even in his agony, the worry about the TurboKat was clear in his mind. His contracting fingers reached for the controls and pressed the bomb bay release button. The twin-doors opened.

As his lungs seemed to burst, as the power kept flowing relentlessly, as the brilliant white of electricity jumped another notch, got more intensive, and swallowed sight and sounds alike, T-Bone pushed the reactivated thrusters forward and finally, mercifully, passed out.

The TurboKat jumped forward, snapping the steel cable that held her. The abrupt forward thrust shook the jet and the unfastened barrels inside began to roll, falling out of the bomb bay and onto the airstrip whilst the jet darted away from its hazardous cargo.

High voltage sprang from T-Bone's foot to the remote control in a colorless arching rainbow. The sudden charge short-wired the circuits within.

It was as if one had pressed the trigger.

***

Jake neared the edge and leaped wide.

Inside the gel-filled barrels, three detonators received the signal they were designed for to ignite on…

  


THURSDAY, 10:23 A.M.

The explosion began at the hangar's threshold, expanding uncontrollably. A concentric sphere of fire spread outwards, rushed into the hangar, rebounded from its ceiling, and multiplied in power in the confined space. Heat rose to a level that wiped out even bacteria, sterilized the hangar, before it melted down the walls of metal and the synthetic materials on its path into the engine room beneath. Licking at the base grades with a fury, the inferno shot out across the runway, a hungry demon on the loose. It greedily raced after the accelerating TurboKat, smashed everything to smithereens in its relentless chase.

Against such a mighty, devastating force, even the fast SWAT Kats' jet was not nearly fast enough, and fiery tongues at last caught up with the jet. The red-black cloud enfolded her completely and then the TurboKat was suddenly gone. The erupting firestorm roared out as it shot out over the tarmac, swallowing Turmoil's ship in its mighty jaws.

The moment gravity won out over Jake's forward thrust, the explosion wave reached him. As the wall of compressed air hit him and made him cartwheel in the air like a ball in a deadly game, all he could do was to grip his backpack on his shoulder tightly so as not to lose it.

Then, the flames reached him.

  


THURSDAY, 10:23 A.M.

Commander Feral stormed out of Enforcer Headquarters' Main Entrance, staggering. Tumbling down the street, his eyes stayed focused on the form of Turmoil's doomsday ship that kept nearing remorselessly. 

On the outside, one couldn't catch a glimpse of the void he felt inside, of the kat into which the last hour's events had turned him. Felina's almost certain fate had left him dispirited, walking on more dead than alive.

His Enforcers did all they could to oppose evil out there. Day after day, year after year, they fought against crime, and dearly, *dearly* did they pay for this, with the lives of their comrades, of their friends and family members, as the blood-price for peace.

And yet, they could not banish evil permanently, whereas the price they paid was unacceptably high. But, they had to fight on despite these risks, for giving up would mean pain indescribable for the millions of citizens of MegaKat City who depended upon the Enforcers to protect them.

He had lost so many of his soldiers to the thugs' cold-blooded attacks already. And, each day the number kept rising.

Commander Feral cursed silently. His own breathing was unnaturally loud to his ears, pulsing in sync with the pain about Felina's death.

_Felina…_

He adopted a feral grimace.

Turmoil might manage to destroy Headquarters, but she couldn't win!

No, they wouldn't let the thugs win over. They would resist to the last kat standing. 

_We owe it to them…_

The Enforcers wouldn't falter. MegaKat City was a city that would *never* bend its knee to these thugs!

_Felina, you did not die in vain…_

And, in the blossoming of this thought, an orange flash spread out from the sky, drawing Feral's attention to it.

In shocked joy, he witnessed the wonder of Turmoil's ship exploding in mid-flight, still about one kilometer away from Headquarters. Not a second later, the wind started to stir, building up to an eerie howling around him, and the windows exploded from every house roundabouts as the explosion blast rushed him over, almost knocking him from his feet.

Feral looked up again. The flames were devouring the behemoth ship, its gargantuan form dying silently. Its own motion was gone…

It was going down over the city!

  


THURSDAY, 10:24 A.M.

Pain brought him back to his senses. Jake wheezed and coughed, thankful for the fresh air that had replaced the thick black smoke enveloping him after the explosion. The air also burned sharply in his right side where the main blast of the fire had met him, where he had gained serious second-degree burns in his getaway.

Something was pulling at his right shoulder, he realized, and he forced his eyes open, just to see with shocking finality that he was racing down onto MegaKat Park at a hundred miles an hour! Impact was only a couple of seconds away…

Still unable to put his backpack on correctly, Jake had no choice but to pull the parachute cord, although he knew the consequences.

The parachute unfolded and slowed his fall dramatically. A jolt went through his right shoulder that was usually meant to be absorbed by a kat's whole torso, and Jake cried in agony as his arm dislocated with a smacking sound, the limb almost being torn out.

The world turned colorless before Jake's eyes, and he nearly fainted. Somewhere in his mind, he recognized that he was still too fast in falling, but he couldn't do anything about it. He couldn't steer, least of all decrease his falling rate, with only his left arm…

Then, he hit the ground with his feet up front. He hit it much too fast.

The impact on the muddy ground was both remorseless and fateful, and his left lower leg snapped like a dry twig. If Jake had still had some air left over, he would have screamed his lungs out, but so, tears just welled up in his eyes as his whole body shook in pain.

Jake tried to stand up. It proved to be impossible, and it cost him much of his remaining strength. He lifted his head to inspect his leg. He could see the white of the bone through his fur… It was an open fracture.

He let his head fall back into the dirt, looking up in the sky. Turmoil's ship was breaking apart and coming down all around him.

And, if Turmoil was aboard that ship…

He started to shed tears. He sobbed over her loss, out of pure anger, even over himself.

A shadow grew larger over him; something was falling out of the sky. A quadratic five-meter-wide airstrip grate was coming down right on top of him.

Jake rolled to the side, but only feebly. He couldn't get away in his condition, and he didn't really want to, either. Chance had taken away the only thing that was precious to him:

_Turmoil…_

He felt the earth shake as the metal buried into the earth only inches away from his back. Jake cackled hollowly. It seemed ironic that the grate had missed him when he would have preferred it to guillotine him, to end his suffering.

It was only then that a new pain shot through his body. It originated from his tail, told him that the grate hadn't missed him completely…

  


THURSDAY, 10:24 A.M.

Through a rain-streaked window, Mayor Manx watched in horror as Turmoil's burning aircraft came down from the skies above MegaKat Park like a sinking yacht.

He started to shake, his teeth clattering long accompanied by sobs.

The Enforcers couldn't do anything, and neither had the vigilante SWAT Kats appeared to save his city. Not even Callie had created a wonder this time. She had run to search for help, but there were no helping hands for a situation like this…

Alone on his office's floor, the Mayor felt cold and abandoned and helpless and small, watching the ship finally fall onto MegaKat Park.

The noise of the crash came a tad later, shaking the last intact windowpane and consequently breaking it apart as a last proof of the impossible.

The impossible that had occurred and that had taken its bite in the form of a square mile out of the green heart of MegaKat City.

The sole comforting thought was that MegaKat Park was the best place for the ship to go down; if one could talk about 'good' in such a dreadful happening. But, with the storm and the Enforcer warnings, the park must have been deserted. The only part of the city uninhabited.

How high would the chances be for an aircraft of that size just to crash there?

Destiny was a cruel thing, mocking in an instant and supporting in the next, but never really fair. Never really friendly either.

Manx looked down at the seething fiery inferno of what had been a beautiful park up to this day, crying. It was a heavy blow to the city, a disaster to the city's funds. But, scarier: an event that would invite the criminals to stalk the shaken beast of a city.

  


THURSDAY, 10:57 A.M.

There was just rain, and smoke and fire. But, the fire was dying out. All over the park, several fire squads were fighting the last sources of the flames between blazing-hot metal wrecks.

Alex longed for a cigarette. A good, deep drag on a cigarette would calm him, but he had forgotten to put them into his pocket before he went to work. Just a puff or two… It would distract him from the ghoulish nightmare of reality.

Steel… Steel was all around him. Black-charred, broken, twisted and sharp-edged steel, smoldering where only green trees should have been, and fields of grass skirted by multi-colored beds of flowers.

This was a park turned airship graveyard!

"Found anything, sonny?" his fatherly, grey-furred partner Tim Benedict approached him. His wet, white uniform of a paramedic made him look unworldly in this brownish and black hell.

Alex shook his head. "There's nobody here."

The thick rain in addition to the biting smoke doomed any attempt to see much of the surrounding park area. But, it didn't matter. They would not find anyone between the fires. If the crew had gone down with this monster, they were certainly dead. No one could have survived this catastrophe. If the ship had gone down three miles from here…

Alex got sick at the mere thought.

"You alright?" Tim had noticed the greenish complexion under his facial fur.

"I could do with a cigarette right now," Alex admitted.

"You and me both, sonny. You and me both…" 

Alex blinked, surprised. In contrast to him, Tim usually didn't smoke. But, then, this wasn't a normal day, was it?

"Let's move on. Over there," Tim pointed to the left, where a giant oak stood amidst a sea of airship debris in the leftovers of a playground. The tree had been left wondrously unscarred by the now extinguished fires.

Gulping hard, Alex nodded his approval, and the two shaken, drenched paramedics walked over to their next search ground. Two dozen of helpers throughout the park. Untiring in their self-sacrificing task of saving lives.

Alex saw Tim's features harden as they carefully worked their way through the sharp metal fragments. He could imagine what he was going through. Sebastian, Tim's youngest son, was nine. An age at which playgrounds were a second home for these young, energetic rascals. Just a look at the broken swing under its coffin of smoldering metal grates brought back a wave of nausea.

Then, Alex spotted a hand in between its ruins.

"Casualty," he screamed over the noise of the rain and ran toward the swing, splattering his trousers to the waist with mud.

Tim was by his side in an instant. Together they shoveled their way through the heavy debris in which the unmoving form lay amidst. Alex heaved a grate to the side while his partner tossed away a five-foot iron rod that rolled into a muddy puddle with a sucking sound.

The first thing Alex noticed as the kat's body was halfway unburied were his clothes. They were black. Black like this nightmare, like the whole day. Tim hauled another grate that had covered the casualty's torso aside. It would have crushed his chest if not for a second grate that had buried deeply into the ground vertically directly beside him. In cooperation with the swing, it had functioned as a supporting pillar for the other grate.

"Hey," Alex shouted surprised, "damn, it's a SWAT Kat." He pointed at the glovatrix.

The paramedics had stumbled over Jake.

"This ain't no SWAT Kat," Tim responded, working on. "I've never seen them wear black uniforms."

Tim was right, Alex saw. But… "If that's no SWAT Kat, who is he then?" He stretched the last word as he put all his efforts into lifting another lurk-warm metal plate.

"Must be one of Turmoil's crewmembers. And, he's severely injured. Look!" Tim's voice had frozen noticeably as he felt Jake's faint pulse and he indicated at Jake's arm with a nod of his head.

"We must get him to the hospital straight away!"

Alex searched the area all around the vertically buried grate with frenzy. "I can't find his tail."

He received a cold answer.

"Forget about the tail, Alex! His leg has to be seen to *now*, and so does his shoulder and his burns.

If this kat is jointly responsible for all the destruction and suffering, he got much more than he deserved, just losing his tail, if you ask me."

  


THURSDAY, 12:02 A.M.

"…crashed down on MegaKat Park and turned it into a sterile combat zone, but, miraculously, seems to have caused no casualties.

With their flying base destroyed, the last five members of Turmoil's MegaSquadron turned their backs on the city and disappeared. No one knows where they have gone into hiding. The Enforcers had neither planes nor pilots available to give chase after them with Enforcer Headquarter bombarded and taken out; here's some video footage of the damage.

The crew of Turmoil's ship saved themselves with emergency parachutes and landed in the waiting arms of the Enforcers.

Only Turmoil has vanished without trace. According to unconfirmed reports, she left the rest of the crew only minutes before the explosion, and hasn't been seen ever since. Although it is possible that she died in the explosion, it is more probable that she used the pandemonium to escape justice.

Also unconfirmed are the rumors about Turmoil's accomplice. Strangely enough, the lack of indications on sides of the Enforcers about Hard Drive or his whereabouts are leaving room for speculation about his or some other villain's possible part in the dramatic play to which we have just become witness."

The road conditions got worse, with potholes now taking on the size of kathole covers. It got impossible to evade these craters, and whenever her tires hit a pothole, the rumbling made her feel nauseous and groan in pain at the same time. Ignoring her condition and concentrating on her mission, she leaned forward and turned the radio louder to compensate for the noise that had caused her to miss the last statement.

"How or why it was destroyed in a mysterious explosion is still to be solved. After their futile appearance at Pumadyne yesterday, when the whole disaster started, the SWAT Kats are the number one reason to be associated with Turmoil's downfall, but, so far, there have been no eyewitnesses to confirm that the TurboKat had neared, let alone reached, Turmoil's aircraft.

As it seems, it may still take a while until light is shed on our speculations. Right now, repairing the damage Turmoil caused to Enforcer Headquarters and MegaKat Park is the only thing that matters. There will be enough time for answers when the more important tasks of quenching the fires, searching for casualties and eliminating shock and chaos have been finished. As soon as this is the case, Kats Eye News will present them to you…"

Lieutenant Felina Feral died for answers, however. The surrealistic scenario of a giant ship exploding without outer influence and falling down onto MegaKat Park brought up more questions than it answered.

T-Bone's fate occupied her primarily. For Felina, his condition was more important than her own, and the Feral family was tough-breed as well as stubborn.

Her condition, that firstly meant that she was alive. After the impact with the brick wall, her seat's rockets had ignited and maneuvered her back into a normal position, and at the same time, the parachute had unfolded. Ejector seats were explicitly constructed to do this, so that a pilot could eject out of a plane even if it was flying upside-down.

Yet… Felina swore to never redo *that* stunt again!

The car jumped as it hit a pothole, and the bump very nearly made her scream in pain. Yes, she was alive, but she wasn't well. The collision had seen to that…

_"Well, lieutenant, you might very likely suffer from a concussion, and I'd advise you not to move your body too much and to keep your eyes shut…" _Felina shunned the voice of reason in her head. It sounded too much like the doctor that had greeted her at the side of the hospital bed on awakening. And, the fact that the speech held a good sense of wisdom didn't exactly make it better.

Instead, her mind stayed fixed on T-Bone. She remembered the broken tom that had sat in front of her this morning in the Enforcer canteen… If he was alive, her uncle would lump him together with Razor, no matter his part in stopping Turmoil from destroying Headquarters. She would warn him…

_Holy Kats, please let him be alive…_

***

The muddy road led her to a bleached arrow sign whose withered head pointed the way. She had almost missed it in the heavy rain. Five more minutes thereafter, a desolate place that she now knew had been the home to MegaKat City's greatest heroes for the last five years materialized before her car.

It was a deserted, bleak garage, a gloomy place to be found in the most forlorn desert at the end of the world.

Felina stopped her car and shut down the engine. She climbed out of the driver's seat slowly to comply with the rotating world around her, and walked to the house.

A weather-eaten piece of paper was fastened at the front door with a piece of scotch tape. It fluttered noisily in the wind. _'Due to personal reasons, the garage is closed until further notice,'_ was written on it in black handwriting.

_T-Bone's handwriting? Or Razor's?_ Felina asked herself. She realized how little she knew about them. 'T-Bone and Razor', that alone was evidence to that. They were not T-Bone and Razor, but rather Chance Furlong and Jake Clawson, but even now that she knew their identities, they were only T-Bone and Razor in her mind.

The SWAT Kats.

But, there were normal kats behind these masks. The citizens of MegaKat City tended to see 'their' heroes as supernatural beings, and little did they know about the cruel fate of the two ex-Enforcers who had fought for them all these years.

Felina knew much more about the SWAT Kats than most other kats, and yet she knew not nearly enough to fully imagine the suffering they must have gone through. She only knew one thing:

Their hero double lives had destroyed them!

Felina tried the doorknob but found the door locked. Unable to break the door open, as she would have usually done it, she picked up the doormat instead. A key beneath it fit the lock.

The door opened inwards silently, and Felina stepped into the house, already drenched.

"T-Bone…?" she shouted through the corridor. There was no response.

Slowly, Felina walked through the house, beginning with the living room and the kitchen, working her way up to the second floor. She felt like an intruder with each step, as if she simply did not belong here.

She shouted once more. The rain outside pattered silently on the roof. Else, there was no answer.

She searched on. If T-Bone wasn't here, perhaps he had been back already. Maybe he had taken some personal belongings and left the exile for good, knowing that her uncle would be stalking him soon. If he had gone in haste, he would have left some traces, some open drawers or some clothes… She would know that he had been here.

She would know it…

But, there was nothing.

Ten minutes later, Felina climbed down to the ground floor again. She clutched firmly to the banister. Her head was worse than ever, her vision in a nonstop spin. And, the pain was joined by the certain knowledge that T-Bone hadn't been here in the last hours.

Felina didn't know what she would have done if she had found him in the house. She had hijacked the next best Enforcer car standing before MegaKat Memorial Hospital without really thinking about that. What would she have done? Would she have told T-Bone to run away and hide? To surrender to her uncle and to tell him truth that he had opposed Turmoil and his friend? She couldn't say. But, she had wanted T-Bone to be *alive*!

Bereft of hope, Felina suddenly noticed the hatch to the hangar beneath the house.

Although it didn't bring her any optimism back, Felina opened the hatch and climbed the ladder down into darkness. The sudden change in brightness made her lose her bearings, and her grip on the metal slipped. She landed hard on the cold concrete platform at the base of the ladder.

The pain was back stronger than before. Felina moaned mutely. It took her more than a minute until she could sit up, and another one to find the switch on the wall.

Bright artificial light flooded the subterranean complex a couple of seconds later, much to her eyes' distress. Felina closed her eyes and opened them again carefully. The whirling image stayed, but the urge to vomit was gone for the moment.

Felina rested against the wall and let her eyes wander around. The hangar was vaster than she had imagined. There was at least one more level beneath the level she had just reached. Under normal circumstances, she would have explored the hangar thoroughly, awed at the wonders of the SWAT Kats' gadgets and vehicles. But, Felina knew her senses were rapidly dwindling away. She would need to get to the Medical Department.

And, it would be very unlikely to find T-Bone in a dark hangar anyway.

She turned for the ladder when she heard the voice.

"Jake…?

JAKE, IS THAT YOU?"

Felina turned again and searched the right side of the hangar where the voice had originated.

With an almost running pace, Turmoil stepped into view from some hiding place and stopped dead when she saw that it wasn't Razor, but her.

"I'm afraid Jake couldn't make it," Felina said harshly, wondering whether her voice sounded believably tough. Her legs felt like butter. She plainly had no idea on how to keep Turmoil at bay in her current state, without handcuffs and a weapon.

To her surprise, the problem was solved on its own. Turmoil fell to the floor.

"Jake…. Jake…. Jak…" Her words turned into sobs.

The Enforcer could only stare at the villain. 

_She loves him,_ Felina thought in disbelief as she walked over to the other she-kat. She lifted her from the ground. Turmoil was limp in her grip, apathetic.

_She loves him truly!_

***

Felina and Turmoil left the house by the front door. They seemed more like two traumatized she-kats sharing grief than like captor and captive as they walked toward the Enforcer car.

Felina's last strength was dwindling away. The effort of climbing up the ladder again had seen to that. Driving Turmoil back to Headquarters was out of the question, so she locked her up in the car and asked for help over the radio. In no condition to drive, she just sat down on the driver's seat and closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, Felina saw two Enforcer cars heading for the salvage yard.

Commander Feral had finally uncovered the SWAT Kats' secret base!

_But, there are no SWAT Kats any more, uncle, _she sadly admitted to herself lastly.

* * *

***To be concluded - in "A Matter of Trust"***


	6. Part 6: A Matter of Trust

  


TITLE:

NEMESIS 6 - A MATTER OF TRUST

AUTHOR:

Helion

BEGIN OF WRITING:

December 01, 2001

FINISHED WRITING:

July 27, 2002

FINAL CHECKING:

July 28, 2002

RATING / WARNINGS:

PG-13 some violence / some drama in overall story

SYNOPSIS:

Chance prepares to continue the SWAT Kat business solo. But his plans don't get everybody's approval.

LEGAL NOTICE:

'SWAT Kats - The Radical Squadron' and the characters of the show are the property of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

I have at long last reached the end of this story. Ain't it just surprising how large a fic can actually grow? The size of "Nemesis" clearly surpassed my estimate by the factor three, and I still shortened some scenes and left out a few things I'd have liked to put into the text. Anyway - with my thanks once more going to all the reviewers on FF.N, and to C. L. Furlong and Kristen Sharpe for their tremendous help of reviewing and correcting my works respectively - here's the story's last part; I hope it's enjoyable!

  


* * *

NEMESIS - PART 6: A MATTER OF TRUST

* * *

Kill the kat you name your foe,   
And strength you'll give him doing so.   
Beat him, mock him, rout his fleets,   
You think you'll break him with your deeds?   
He'll rake the fire your corpse soon feeds!

But once you crush his glorious faith,   
You cut a will that else would save.   
For without hope, future bears doom,   
And he will cry and moan in gloom.   
Alone. Forgotten. Cold his tomb.

* * *

"What's said can't be unsaid."   
"What's done can't be undone."

-- _Proverbs_

* * *

THURSDAY, 10:24 A.M.

It was a freight train. A never-ending freight train, rolling by far in the distance, its continuous reverberation a dull murmur to his ears. And, yet, it couldn't possibly be any kind of train…

Not even death was tranquil.

That was the greatest surprise, although it shouldn't have surprised him at all. Why should distress end with death? It'd be too good to be true.

Another thought struggled to the surface of his mind from the depths of nothingness. For some reason, it was funny, but before it could grow to become a chuckle, the reason for its springing in life was forgotten.

There was nothing. No light. No inner peace. Not anything… Just blackness, utter blackness, bearing a bone-chilling cold.

And, the endless wail of the freight train…

Something stepped into this nonbeing, crept its way past his senses, eluded identification. But, he hung on to it, as it was better than this numb void, better than nothingness. It was – a smell… Weird… A weird smell, a sharp odor. It reeked of scorched metal, and burned synthetics.

It stirred something from the yawning abyss that was his mind. Blackness wavered, making way for grey. And, if there was grey, then there was white.

The sound of the freight train cleared up, too. The sound intensified, and as he was slowly returning to consciousness, he noticed that it followed an unsystematic pattern. It sounded more like…

_The wind howling around the TurboKat…_

T-Bone opened his eyes, revived by the sounds and the cold. Downtown MegaKat City was a rapidly growing field that raced up upon him.

"Aaahhhhh…"

He wouldn't have many more seconds. Ten, maybe fifteen…

In a reflex, he pushed the ejector seat button.

The battered canopy slid back. A jolt shot through T-Bone as he was ejected, a second, sharper jolt hit him when his falling velocity was reduced abruptly by the seat's parachute. He cried aloud. Every muscle in his body seemed to be stiff and hurting.

But, however immense the pain, he was alive!

T-Bone sailed on the winds above MegaKat Park. A giant shadow plunged straight down to earth beneath him, and buried into the moist grass at the maximum rate of fall, splintering into thousands of pieces. Then, it exploded.

The TurboKat – annihilated.

A minute thereafter, T-Bone hit the ground, every bone aching.

Due to the jolt ejecting had caused, he managed to disentangle himself from the crust of cement that glued him to his seat, and he rolled into the mud, exhausted.

The sound of an explosion roared down from the sky. T-Bone's head snapped up with fear-stricken eyes, wildly searching.

A second burst split the silence before he realized that it was only thunder. Except for the storm, the sky was empty. He relaxed visibly. One thick drop of water splashed on his swollen nose, which had finally stopped bleeding. Within seconds, the drops were coming down in buckets.

T-Bone walked a step and winced. His thigh felt as if pricked by an army of blades where the Mini Scrambler Missile had buried into his flesh. With a cry not nearly describing his pain, he pulled it out.

He couldn't recover now!

Limping, he stepped into motion, even if not to get out of the rain. He had still one job to do.

And, he didn't like it a bit…!

  


THURSDAY, 11:38 A.M.

The bolt didn't move in the slightest. Chance shifted his position to get a better grip on the box end wrench. Shifting was a difficult task; there was simply not enough space in the SWAT Kat vehicles to move around freely. Some bolts were hard to get at, especially if the object of desire was located in the deepest, furthest corner, like this one was. Chance asked himself for the nth time how they'd managed to fasten their seats in the first place. There always seemed to be a lack of space…

But, that would change soon.

Once he had removed Razor's seats from all their vehicles!

He shifted a tad more and wriggled his hands toward the wrench until he could close his fingers around it. He pulled it with all his strength, puffing and panting. As a reward, the bolt loosened.

Chance started to grin when the wrench suddenly slipped. It lost the hold on the bolt and the wrench slammed against the metal frame of the rear seat with a din, his knuckles close to follow in the progress of meeting the hard metal. Pain, surprise and humiliation wound up and were voiced in a curse.

Still muttering under his breath, he dived his torso as far behind the seat as he could, retrieving the lost wrench. It was then that he heard the clamoring.

He paused, hoping for the moment that the sound was a figment of his imagination. But, he knew it wasn't…

"I wish you hadn't come," he called loud from behind the seat.

There was no answer except for another clamoring, as if the pile of now-obsolete parts of their vehicles that he had erected in his efforts was under attack by a lunatic.

_Disorientation. Final phase,_ he thought.

A wave of guilt flooded through him but vanished as soon as it had come. His decision was long-made, irreversible. There was no other way, anyhow.

He at last got a grip on the wrench and attacked the bolt again, speaking besides.

"You should have stayed in bed, you're in no condition to walk around."

Once more, there was only silence; curiously accusative quietness.

Chance labored on. "You wonder at the pile I've erected." No question. "Yes, I will continue with the SWAT Kats business solo. I should have made this decision years ago!

I'm the best pilot MegaKat City's ever seen, Turmoil's been right about that. But, the creeps like DarkKat often get away, however hard I try. Why? It took me way too long to find an answer to that question."

The bolt was loose, and Chance centered his attention on the last one that attached the seat to the floor.

"A chain's just as strong as its weakest link… I couldn't really unfold my full talent up to now. For the media, it's always Razor and T-Bone…" He chuckled dryly. "Razor and T-Bone…

You know, it's always the SWAT Kats who fail – both of us.

Ironic, isn't it, that it took Turmoil to open my eyes? It never was my flying that failed, but the gadgets and missiles.

Razor is long gone, but only in these last days have I realized this completely. The way you looked at me, watched me with cold eyes…

In the last months, you've retreated to the yard more often than the puny things you discover there would justify. I don't know what your game is, but let me tell you that it failed! Crime fighting is my only true purpose, and I won't let you drag my achievements down. I won't let you destroy what I've labored so hard to build up."

The last bolt went off, and Chance straightened, grabbing the heavy seat, lifting it and throwing it down into the hangar, adding to the noise.

"I'm sorry for your suffering, but it's soon over. The poison works quite fast."

He stood up and jumped out of the TurboKat.

"I'm sorry, Ja…" He cut off.

The ragged, beaten, blood-clotted, cement-encrusted, soaking wet figure snarling in his face wasn't Jake.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BROTHER?"

The words reached Chance's ears a split-second before T-Bone's gloved fist reached his face.

  


THURSDAY, 11:40 A.M.

It was in the midst of his fight with the Flight Commander aboard Turmoil's ship that T-Bone had finally figured out what was truly going on.

All the missing details that had tormented his mind the last hours could be boiled down into one question: Why had he survived Razor's assassination attempts?

Jake's plans had gone awry *two times*. The TurboKat hadn't crashed at Pumadyne, which had led to 'Plan B': T-Bone's 'fall' from Turmoil's ship. Turmoil must have been certain that he would not survive the drop, *even* with his backpack on, or she would have taken it off, he was now sure.

So, what went wrong? Jake's plans seldom failed, and *never* twice in a row…

Some outer factor had forced his schemes to fail!

As he had lain on the metal grates, bleeding from Jake's hit to his nose, the answer had suddenly loomed up before T-Bone's inner eye clear as crystal. It was Chance's own actions that had come into play: his single-handedly work on the TurboKat yesterday, his incident with the electric welder.

He had *electrocuted* himself and the TurboKat. And, the dimensional radar could be allergic to high voltage sometimes. Anything that had been swept up by the electricity – the TurboKat, Chance, and the welder – had jumped dimensions, just as it had happened one year back, when he and Razor had faced their evil twins, the "Dark SWAT Kats".

But, this time, there had been one crucial difference…

In this alternative dimension, things had looked alike when compared to their own world, and events had still run somewhat parallel.

This parallelism had completed the illusion. When Chance had transported himself and the jet into another dimension, his other dimension's counterpart had welded his own TurboKat and had experienced the same phenomenon. Both Chances and their jets had *swapped* dimensions.

When T-Bone had at last become conscious of this, it had been almost too late. Only sheer luck, or perhaps fate, was the reason why he was back in his own dimension now.

After realizing, he had tried to save the TurboKat on board of Turmoil's ship, because her destruction would have bereft him of the only chance of ever getting back to normality again. But, the Flight Commander had been prepared, and, with the jet's controls disabled, it had been an easy task for him to cement T-Bone to his seat.

Since he hadn't been able to free himself from the hard cement coffin, T-Bone had shot the Mini-Scrambler Missile at his own thigh, hoping that the cement would crack up in his electroshock-caused spasms. That, however, hadn't worked as successfully as he had hoped. The cement had loosened *too late*, crossing his plan of removing the Mini-Scrambler Missile from his leg and lifting off. Instead, he had fainted from the pain only seconds later after his hand had broken free. The high energy had hit the detonator next to his foot, and the explosion had nearly destroyed the TurboKat.

Death had come close to catching him. He had saved Enforcer Headquarters from being obliterated, but it had been *so* close… 

If his left hand hadn't cramped around the X-Ray Scope cable that he ripped off in his repairs…

His body had conducted the energy, and electricity had flown into the cable and from there throughout the ship. It had reached the dimensional radar just a few moments after the energy had leaped into the remote control and blew up the barrels with the explosive gel. The dimensional jump had been initialized in tandem with the flames being about to devour the TurboKat.

Unspeakable relief had embraced T-Bone on reawaking as he realized that only the storm loomed over MegaKat City, and not Turmoil's ship. He was back in his own dimension! He had thought he had his life back, with its own anomalous definition of ordinariness.

T-Bone had thought that it might be a shock for his twin to hear that he was in another dimension, and that his partner had tried to kill him in his stead. He hadn't really known how to tell his doppelganger the bad news.

What he had just heard from his own voice, from his mirror image, had truly shocked him instead.

_He poisoned Jake…!_

Ordinariness was fading again, threatened to be destroyed in spite of everything – after all he'd been going through!

Anger filled T-Bone. Anger so immense that it was beyond words. T-Bone started to roar as his unmasked self stumbled back from the blow he'd just received.

"W-H-A-T

D-I-D

Y-O-U

D-O

T-O

M-Y

B-R-O-T-H-E-R?"

And, he emphasized every word with a punch.

***

Chance parried T-Bone's last strike, recovered from his surprised daze. Like his masked other ego earlier, he too was now bleeding from his nose. T-Bone's enraged first uppercut had seen to that.

But, already, Chance analyzed grimly, the strength was leaving T-Bone again.

T-Bone heavily lacked sleep; he had lastly slept well in the night preceding his nightmare, and that was two days past. The shock of Jake's treason had left him dispirited, and, primarily, he was injured, too worn out to fight. Anger had stirred up his spirits, but now his weak body was taking its toll.

In direct combat with an otherwise physically identical twin, Chance was in a better condition.

Gaining assurance in this fact, Chance charged his enemy. He quickly stepped forward and landed a punch of his own.

T-Bone tumbled back with a suppressed groan. He clutched at his face; when he withdrew his hand, its fur was glistering red. The nosebleed was back.

Chance struck a hard left hook to T-Bone's cheek.

T-Bone ducked just in time, and Chance's fist met only his helmet. The thrust of the blow made T-Bone go down on his knees, but the enemy's expected second strike failed to come. T-Bone looked up. Chance was clutching his hand, his face a livid, pain-contorted grimace.

Time for T-Bone to strike back!

He sprang up from his knees, and punched Chance in the stomach. Chance doubled over, gasping for air, and went down on the floor. Before T-Bone could set after him, however, he rolled back to his feet.

He massaged his stomach with his right hand, eyes fervent with rage looking on T-Bone. He started to laugh, a glacial laugh that never touched his eyes.

"If that's the best you can offer, then you're in serious trouble!" he coughed, spitting away a lump of blood that was pouring into his mouth from his nose.

"No, it isn't!" T-Bone snapped back, raising his glovatrix.

Chance did a forward roll. The Mini-Spider Missile flew low over his head but missed him as he rolled toward T-Bone. He came up to his feet and slammed into him with his right shoulder. Chance's impetus took T-Bone off his feet and both kats went down in an arc.

T-Bone landed flat on his stomach. He grunted as Chance tackled his ribs with his knee, and before he could do anything, Chance had positioned himself atop the backpack.

In his quest for getting home, T-Bone had after a long walk found a gas station, and refilled his backpack with enough gas to fly the rest of the way to the garage. Now, the heavy rucksack was to his disadvantage. Chance pressed him down with its additional weight, cautiously affixing T-Bone's arms to the side of his body with his feet.

"You better tell me what the heck is going on. Pronto!" Chance demanded with a sneer.

"What does it look like, you moron?" T-Bone retorted with a strained voice.

Chance put on a nasty scowl. "Wrong answer!"

T-Bone's helmet protected his skull as his forehead slammed onto the concrete floor from the blow to his back of his head.

"I won't repeat myself! What's going on?"

"You're not in your dimension. You came into our dimension when… When you wielded the TurboKat yesterday… A side effect of the dimensional radar… You…

YOU POISONED MY FRIEND, AND NOT THE JAKE YOU KNEW!" T-Bone screamed.

T-Bone struggled again, but to no avail.

"And, now you're telling me you want to avenge him," Chance spewed out in disbelief. Anger loomed in his eyes. "No, you don't! Nothing's gonna take away my SWAT Kat double life!"

T-Bone started to chuckle miserably, beaten by the absurdity of the whole state of affairs. He was pinned down; he knew he was defeated. He closed his eyes.

Above him, Chance straightened himself for the final strike.

T-Bone felt the air stir as something rushed down on him, like a fist nearing his face. Suddenly, Chance's weight was gone from his chest, and a loud clamor filled the hangar.

He opened his eyes again.

Chance lay in the pile of gadgets he'd erected, with a Mini-Spider Missile wrapped around his torso.

The masked vigilante yanked his head around.

Jake stood at the bottom of the stairs, clad only in a pair of pajamas. The glovatrix on his right arm was pointed sternly at Chance.

"What…" Chance struggled his way out of the missile's embrace and from the pile of gadgets strewn around him. His voice broke off as he saw Jake. "But…"

"Surprised to see me alive?" Jake's voice was faint, but steel. "I threw up breakfast, *Chance*!"

Keeping an eye on his acidly addressed doppelganger, T-Bone stood up.

The enemy force one kat up in number, Chance searched the room like a wild beast surrounded by predators. He started to run for the jet.

Jake fired another Mini-Spider Missile at Chance, but, strangely, missed him by yards.

Chance leaped into the TurboKat, pressed a button that started the platform hydraulics, initialized the jet's start-up sequence, and watched for the platform to lower to the runway level.

T-Bone turned to Jake for a second. He still stood unmoving at the stairs, too far away to be of help. T-Bone ran toward the circular hole in the ground. He saw the TurboKat vanish into semi-darkness. Chance had not closed the canopy yet!

Instinctively, T-Bone jumped down into the blackness. He landed in Razor's compartment of the jet right at the moment at which Chance pushed the canopy button and jerked the thrusters forward.

The TurboKat accelerated and shot out of her subterranean hide-out with two SWAT Kats aboard, just as always, and yet so much unlike normal circumstances.

Neither Chance nor T-Bone noticed Jake's collapse in the hangar, his slim body finally giving in to the cramps that had taken hold of him.

  


THURSDAY, 11:43 A.M.

Chance flew a curve, steering the jet away from MegaKat City, toward the vast barrenness called MegaKat Desert, where T-Bone and Razor tested their missiles in its sandy canyons. He pulled the joystick fiercely to his body. The TurboKat ascended rapidly.

Without a stable hold to clutch on to, T-Bone was tossed around in the empty space where Razor's seat had been. He fell down in a heap and toppled into a corner. His injured thigh hit against the cold metal, hard.

T-Bone screamed in agony.

In front of him, Chance chortled, but continued his climb.

"I'll get you for this," T-Bone shouted over the noise. But, his cocky remark was only reflex. He had no idea what to do. His jumping into the jet had been an impulsive action. How could he defeat Chance in his current state?

Chance obviously thought the same. "Really? Show me!" He brought the TurboKat into a vertical…

…then tipped the joystick to the side, performing a roll.

The TurboKat rotated around its longitudinal axis, and T-Bone was thrown against the canopy as she immediately flew upside-down. His helmet's frontage bumped against the Plexiglas with a loud gong reverberating in his skull.

For a split-second, T-Bone could see dark clouds all around them, and when lightning shot out near to the jet with deafening thunder in its tow, he feared that the canopy had been shattered by his impact.

Then, the TurboKat finished her 360°-roll, and T-Bone was flung back down to the co-pilot compartment's floor. Thankfully, he landed on his uninjured right side of his body. His scream of, "OOF," was more voiced in anger than in pain.

Chance laughed aloud.

T-Bone's eyes fell on the floor. Razor's compartment had been stripped naked of its instruments. Thus, all coverings hiding the internal wiring of the jet lay exposed.

_Lightning… The dimensional radar!_

_So, you want to know what's going on, Chance?_

He opened the base covering in a trained two-second procedure. Dozens of cables branched out before him. He searched for the one cable that connected the X-Ray Scope with the central unit. He spotted it amidst a bundle of cables, grabbed the whole bundle and groped for it.

Wind suddenly tugged at his cloths. The canopy was sliding back.

"IT'S TIME YOU GET OFF MY JET!"

Chance's doing! He had started another roll!

T-Bone frantically clutched at the bundle of cables with both hands.

After turning 180 degrees, Chance ended the rolling maneuver. The jet was now flying wrong-side-up. He held the shaking TurboKat in this position, despite the danger flying with an open canopy exposed her to. He waited for T-Bone to let go.

T-Bone clutched at the bundle for his very life. He knew that, even with his backpack on, he would be a sitting duck for Chance and the TurboKat if he fell from board. He was hanging over open space, the airstreams avidly yanking at his legs.

And, his arms were getting weaker.

Panicked, T-Bone let go of the cables with his left arm. His right shoulder protested about holding his complete weight. A bolt of pain shot through it that told him that his body thought doing so had not been such a good idea after all. T-Bone reached over to his glovatrix hand with his left. Despite that his hand shook from the strain, he managed to push a button on it.

Then, his grip slipped.

The canopy closed to his command just on time to stop his fall. T-Bone landed flat on the inside of the rotund Plexiglas structure and performed a roundhouse kick at Chance. He hit him at the back of his head.

Chance lost control of the jet. He jerked the joystick around hard. The TurboKat completed its roll.

T-Bone was thrown back to the ground, headfirst. He cushioned the fall with his arms, landing on his left side for a change. This time, his scream was pure anguish. Black dots crept into his vision.

Realizing that his senses were fading, T-Bone grabbed at the bundle of cables again, sought out the right one, and pulled hard. The cable snapped loose from the central unit. T-Bone held a two-meter cable in his hand.

In the compartment in front of him, the X-ray beam monitor went dark. Chance, on the other hand, shook off his wooziness.

T-Bone had just bitten off the plastic cable sheath that insulated the cable from its last few inches, and was tying a loop when he saw Chance reach forward to his controls.

"I ASKED YOU NICELY!" Chance screamed as he pushed the canopy release.

"WHY DON'T YOU JUST GET LOST!" T-Bone shouted back, throwing the tied end of the cable over Chance's head like a lasso.

Again, the canopy slid back. Chance, despite the cable that was cutting into his neck, performed another roll.

T-Bone fell out of the TurboKat…

…but, not before firing a Mini-Scrambler Missile at the bundle of cables in Razor's compartment.

T-Bone dived down toward earth, not daring to open his parachute. A slow fall would make him an easy target. Nonetheless, T-Bone had to watch in horror as the TurboKat starting a curve that ended in a collusion course.

Chance wouldn't simply let him go! He intended to take him out…

T-Bone realized that though he was falling fast, he would never be fast enough to escape a supersonic aircraft. He faced the jet and awaited the inevitable.

Blue rays of electricity erupted from the Scrambler Missile, spread out through the TurboKat's metallic intestines. High energy surged through the cable and into Chance's neck. His body started to convulse, but his hand cramped hard around the joystick, kept the jet on course.

The TurboKat was already bathed in a bright white when she neared T-Bone's position.

Then, the jet was gone.

Simply gone; sent back to its own dimension only meters before it would have reached him…

The compressed air tightened around T-Bone like a hammer, dragged the tabby along without mercy, clawed at his senses, but somehow he managed not to pass out. Finally, the airwave was gone, and T-Bone pushed the cord on his backpack. The parachute unfolded.

Minutes later, the SWAT Kat touched the ground of a desert canyon in a bit of a rough landing. With his last coherent action, T-Bone rolled next to a rock outcrop.

As the parachute settled down on T-Bone, he instantly fell into a comatose unconsciousness.

  


FRIDAY, 03:47 A.M.

Jake lay uncomfortably on two chairs standing side by side to miserably form a couch. The chairs stood so that he could face the window and the salvage yard outside. He was curled up under a blanket, fighting waves of chills that took turns with phases when his whole body seemed to burn, when he was soaked in sweat and nevertheless shivering.

The shivers and cramps had never left him this night.

His back hurt from the time he'd spent on the chairs, but even if he had been able to, he would not have dared to go to his bed, or to the sofa in the living room. He couldn't watch the salvage yard from either. He could only see the TurboKat in its landing approach to the hangar from his self-erected hard couch.

Each minute that passed by without any sign of the jet was more painful than his backache and cramps, anyway.

The last twenty-four hours were extremely fuzzy in his mind. The day before that, however, was all the more clear. It had been a nightmare.

Jake had woken early on Wednesday and searched the salvage yard for new technology to use for gadgets and weapons. He had roamed the piles of junk for hours, without much success. There was excruciatingly little of use to be found amidst the masses of garbage, and he had given up the search around noon with only two relays as booty.

Back at the house, he'd seen to his great astonishment that Chance had repaired the TurboKat single-handedly already. On the one hand, Jake had been very grateful for that. Having wasted half a day on the yard, repairing the TurboKat for the other half of the day had held little interest for the slender tom. On the other hand, he had felt let down. He and Chance always worked on the TurboKat together, regardless of how severe the problem was. It was an iron rule: they worked as a team, not solo.

He had stated his disappointment to Chance. And, though Chance had apologized for his single-handed work, the look Jake had received from him when he had said so had raised the hairs on his neck.

At that time, Jake had still thought that Chance must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

It happened not very often that one of them was in a bad mood, but naturally, it happened at times. On these occasions, Jake was glad that they had separate rooms to retreat to until the shadow of nonspecific anger had dissolved again. More than once, he had locked himself in his room with a bad temper, so as not to abuse Chance as the target of his fury. Jake would never forgive himself if he were to unjustly accuse Chance in his wrath.

Sensing that Chance wanted some time on his own, Jake had driven to the city to buy a large amount of groceries, a shopping trip that they had pushed ahead of them for far too long.

As he had returned to the garage at about six in the evening, Chance was nowhere to be found, and Jake had guessed that he was probably jogging his bad temper away. So, he had prepared dinner.

When Chance had returned, Jake noticed that his mood still hadn't changed much. But, there was more to it. Somehow, Chance seemed reserved eating with Jake. Kind of evasive and even distant, Jake had thought, much to his own pain.

Soon after dinner, Jake had finally retreated to his room and gone to sleep early. Whatever was occupying Chance's mind had him firmly in its clutches. As a result, he appeared cold-hearted, and it hurt to see his friend like this, but he was unable to do anything about it. Chance had not been talkative about his torment.

On awakening, the world seemed normal again. Jake was woken by the thick aroma of breakfast being made by Chance on Thursday morning. Although the cloudy sky told about a storm coming, this was a sign that his friend's mood had changed, and therefore, weather was irrelevant.

That belief didn't hold long, though. Chance was humorous in the kitchen, yes, and he was more than willing to do idle conversation, but the eerie feeling Jake had experienced the day before hadn't left.

It had intensified.

It had all *looked* fine, all right. Chance had cooked eggs for breakfast, and appetizing ham, and he had even poured Jake a cup of fresh coffee. But, although the scene was totally normal, it had somehow had a surreal touch to it.

Hard was not near enough a word to describe the inner struggle Jake had to fight to admit to himself that Chance appeared to *act* like usual.

But the feeling was there, and when Chance had looked straight at him with a forced indifferent gaze when Jake had drunk his coffee, Jake had experienced a feeling he had never thought he'd come across in his life:

He'd been scared of Chance. 

Scared to death.

By his best friend. By his brother.

Jake was still ashamed that he had had *to force himself* to smile back at Chance, thanking him for the meal. Chance had retorted that it was no problem at all, that he was sorry for yesterday and that he would do the dishes to make up for his behavior.

In that moment, Jake felt even more ashamed doubting his friend, but he had gone to the bathroom nevertheless, where he had put the finger to his throat and had thrown up breakfast again.

It had reduced the amount of poison to a non-lethal level. It had saved his life. And, yet, he still felt guilty for vomiting….

For mistrusting Chance.

Half an hour later, the cramps had begun and his memory began to get sketchy.

He had told Chance that he didn't feel that good, and watched his friend closely. His concern seemed to be sincere when he suggested that Jake should better lie down in his bed.

This was exactly what Jake had done, but not before he had retrieved a glovatrix from his locker.

Jake had lain in his bed and the shivers had attacked him with growing strength. He had sobbed between the convulsions. What had happened that he had to guard his sickbed with a glovatrix, that he suspected Chance to have poisoned him? There was no reasonable explanation for what was going on.

Why was he so uncomfortable with Chance around?

Jake couldn't envision a life without the bond of friendship between him and Chance, and therefore, his distrusting his friend hurt him more than the cramps. What was life worth anyway if the one true miracle supporting it was suddenly gone? Life meant nothing without his brother!

The next conscious thought Jake had had was him wondering about who had entered by the front door. It couldn't be Chance, as Jake had heard him lifting the access hatch and climbing down the ladder into the hangar.

He had risen from his bed, wobbly, and walked down, following the racket.

T-Bone fought with Chance. The sight had given him strength. The *why* still eluded him, but Jake would have bet his life on T-Bone being his partner – his friend and brother – and he had helped him with the glovatrix instantly.

After the two versions of Chance had left with the TurboKat, his last reserves of strength were spent. He had somehow managed to reach the bathroom toilet, but Jake couldn't tell for his life how he had gotten there.

The next hours had been hell. He had thrown up again and again, his stomach soon empty, so that no more than bile came forth, and not even bile thereafter. Only the retching reflex stayed, the urge to retch and retch overpowering his urge to breath at some time. The cramps and shivers didn't recline, and breathing had been almost impossible.

And, above all, Chance's – the *real* Chance's – unknown fate was ablaze at the back of his mind like a hot iron.

At 8 P.M., Jake had felt bloody awful. He had wished he would die from the bottom of his heart.

As Thursday turned into a rainy Friday night, his body's urge to retch had finally ceased, but his difficulties in breathing had increased slightly. Jake didn't know if he was through the worst, or if the toxin had started to attack his lungs.

Chance was still missing. Jake had crept from the bathroom to the hangar's access hatch, just to realize that he must have closed it somehow in his struggle to reach the toilet earlier. A tug on the cord showed he had the strength of a butterfly. The hatch hadn't moved an inch; he couldn't get into the hangar. That'd been the reason why he had used the last strength left in him to erect the couch of chairs under the window.

Jake waited for Chance to return.

For the last three hours, he had waited in vain.

Another intense wave of cramps hit him pitilessly, and every other thought in Jake's mind was forgotten for the moment as he was feebly struggling to fill his lungs with air.

***

Jake woke with a start from the nothingness the last fit had propelled him into. He had had a wonderful vision of the TurboKat returning. There had been the sweet sound of her engines in her landing approach. He endeavored to sit up. It took some effort, but he managed. His strength was slowly returning, and his breathing improving.

His body had finally battled down the poison.

He looked outside. Night had made way for day, and the salvage yard lay shrouded in white morning mists. But, there was no sign of the jet, and the world lay in silence, as if mourning.

An aching deep in his core, Jake slumped down again.

_Chance, where are you…?_

Jake's heart pulsed in pain. He had to search for him, but he feared what he might find. As the SWAT Kats, they were constantly together in danger. Jake had always thought that should they go down in a blaze of glory, they would do this together.

Now, Chance was fighting alone, and he could not help him.

What if he found him dead…? Jake couldn't imagine a life without Chance.

_Don't you dare die on me, Chance!_ he thought furiously.

Angry not with Chance, but with himself, at his incapability to support his brother.

Carefully, he sat up again and wiped away the tear that rolled down his face. He tried to slowly put his weight on his shaking legs. As long as there was no proof, Chance was well. But, the more time that raced away without some good news, the more unlikely it would…

The rumbling came from the backside of the house.

A door was being opened…

_Chance!_

Jake dropped back onto the chair and turned his head from the windows to the door.

"Chance?" His voice was a cough. He repeated his call.

For some dreadful seconds, Jake heard the footsteps growing louder, and the door was being opened. T-Bone stood in the doorframe.

"Jake?" T-Bone's voice sounded twice as shaken as his own.

"Chance…" he only managed to whisper in answer.

T-Bone stepped into the room, his step more a limp than a walk. He left the door ajar. His head hung low, as if the weight of the helmet would pull it down, Jake noticed. 

He looked horrible. His uniform was nothing more than a rag, with holes and cuts all over it, the blue fabric covered with mud, sand and cement. It couldn't hide the parallel claw marks that showed on his torso and striped his arms with red. Dry blood from his nosebleed smeared its front all the way down to the knees, clotted all of what was visible of his facial fur around the bandana mask. But, above all, he looked dog-tired. Shattered.

T-Bone tiredly grabbed his helmet on walking and took it off. It fell to the ground with a muffled bang. When he reached the chairs, he had just taken off his bandana mask.

He sat down on the second chair and looked forlornly at Jake.

Jake had to twist his head around to hide his shock. Just a glimpse at Chance's face had told him without doubt that this was indeed his brother, but it had shown him more:

Chance had aged.

His face was still the same, except for a few two-day stubbles on his chin. Chance had not physically aged.

It was his eyes that were different. They radiated sadness; grief that had accumulated in merely two days, but more than enough to do for a lifetime of agony on a kat.

There were no words for what Chance had been going through, Jake read in these eyes.

He faced Chance again. With all his heart he wanted to embrace him, to share the pain. But, he couldn't. Something told him that it would make the situation even worse.

Somehow, Jake knew *he* was responsible for his friend's suffering.

Chance sat only a few feet away from him. What Jake had wished more than anything else in the world had become real. Yet, at the same time, he was further away then ever before.

Because of him!

A thousand questions and worries were on his mind, and nonetheless Jake fumbled for words.

"The TurboKat…?"

On the inside, Jake wailed. He was doing awkwardly with words more often than not when it came to confessing how much he needed Chance, needed their friendship, but this surpassed every idiocy he'd ever uttered. Here sat his best friend, his brother, looking as if he had been beaten half to death, silent from some massive shock encounter….

AND, HE ASKED ABOUT THE STATUS OF THE JET!

Where the most important and easiest question would have been to ask if he was alright. If he could do anything for Chance….

_The TurboKat…?_ Nothing else would come forth but these stupid words.

Jake started to add something more closely to his feelings when Chance sighed heavily beside him.

"…Is now a wreck in MegaKat Park. Chance escaped with the other," he simply stated.

That put Jake off guard again, and he choked on his words once more.

_The other?_

"I'm afraid I… don't understand. I…" he paused. "Chance…?"

Chance's eyes settled on Jake's.

"…Chance, what happened?"

Chance didn't answer right away. He just watched Jake a moment. He was judging him, Jake realized with a pang of sorrow.

"Jake, I…"

_Please!_ Jake begged silently, _I can do nothing if you don't talk to me. I can't say anything, for I fear I would hurt you even more. Chance, please talk to me! Talk to me! _

_What can I do? What can I do to ease your soul?_

"Pl… Please, Chance, tell me."

Chance looked out of the window with an empty stare.

"I… repaired the TurboKat. I thought it would distract me from something that was bothering me. I had… I had a little accident with the electric welder. I electrocuted the TurboKat and I was thrown to another dimension with her.

Only, I didn't notice…

I didn't notice…"

And, Jake could only listen in horror as Chance recounted the nightmare he had lived through the last days.

***

"The charge hit the dimensional radar and he was thrown back to his own dimension," Chance ended his report with a cracked voice.

"I… should have seen it earlier… That I was in another dimension… Should have realized much earlier why I survived with the TurboKat at Pumadyne…

Felina suggested that it was because Jake tried to double-cross Turmoil, but I was too angry with them then to see that it was not because of one of his mistakes that I survived.

It was the TurboKat. It was *our* jet that was shot at at Pumadyne. Not the one Jake prepared…" he trailed off.

"My other dimension's twin must have constructed the portable beam," Jake concluded for him in a tormented voice with his chin to his chest. "It would shut down the TurboKat's controls, but he needed some controls to stay operational to ensure he could eject and survive. The canopy mechanism and sled, his ejector seat, his ejector button… To achieve this, he must have fiddled with the TurboKat's electrics itself; the beam and the jet were attuned to one another.

Your shut-off of the engines and the restart worked out because the electrics weren't sabotaged on our TurboKat. That's why you were able to save yourself and her."

Chance simply nodded, his memories lost on the morning's events again. Turmoil's shoving him from board…

***

Jake was living through the same scene in his mind.

"We keep our backpacks in the TurboKat, and your rucksack changed dimension with her. That's why Jake's 'Plan B' failed as well. Even if he manipulated that other T-Bone's backpack, it lay in the TurboKat in this dimension, and you wore your own functioning one…"

He looked up, watched the tabby with moist eyes. Still, he didn't know what he could do to help his friend. What could he say to undo the things his other dimensional ego had done?

How could he give back what had been destroyed…?

Chance stood up slowly and looked down at Jake. "You… You knew about the picklocks in my uniforms, didn't you…?"

Jake could only nod in pain.

_I knew about the nightmares Turmoil caused you…_

Chance made a step toward the door. 

"Chance…"

Jake's voice brought him to a stop. He didn't turn but faced the door with closed eyes.

"Chance, I'm…. I'm here."

Jake watched Chance's head drop to his chest. Tears filled Jake's eyes as his friend limped out of the room.

_I'll always be here for you, Chance! I'm here if you need me!_

_Always, Chance!_

Chance vanished down the unlit corridor.

Jake heard his footsteps fading away, staring at the discarded object on the floor.

T-Bone's helmet; protecting shield and disguise of the most caring, courageous and bold kat Jake knew: Chance Furlong.

No one had ever penetrated and destroyed his cheerful, brave spirit. No one ever… But, he – Jake Clawson – had!

_I couldn't bear to lose you! You're my best friend, you're my family. You always stood by my side when I needed your support. You were always there for me. I couldn't face this world without you!_

_I couldn't bear to lose you, Chance!_

  


FRIDAY, 06:31 A.M.

For Chance, the hangar was a shelter. It was a wonderful place. Large and tranquil. Important. He would sit in the cockpit of the TurboKat just staring at the instruments sometimes when he needed a peaceful moment on his own. They had achieved so much down here.

He had tried to banish his nightmare here, too. And, what had he gotten instead…?

Chance limped through the room where it had all started almost exactly 48 hours ago…

When they still had had a TurboKat…

He looked at the pile of equipment next to the platform. A dozen gadgets and tools. Glovatrixes, the TurboKat's ejector seat, even some missiles.

All Razor's. 

Razor's soul, taken from their vehicles by the other Chance.

Chance walked on, searching for something specific.

He found it at last. It was a backpack, and, judging from the straps' size, it was one of his. He grabbed it with a sad chuckle.

Chance activated the jet boosters without putting the rucksack on. As expected, there was no response to his command. He threw it away. The loud echo of its bang ricocheted in the hangar. He sat down in Razor's removed TurboKat seat, exhausted.

_It *has been* manipulated, so that no picklock would save its wearer. With this backpack, the other Chance should have died._

And, somehow, Chance wished he were dead!

No, actually, he wished that he had never even existed. The whole other dimension should have never existed.

His exhausted sigh filled the hangar.

_I wish I'd never seen a glimpse of it!_

It was true: he had trusted Jake more than he had trusted himself. Jake was the stabilizing element of the SWAT Kats, the calm rationale in their friendship. Without Jake, he would run berserk at least twice a day. And, he would have done some rash act at each unexpected encounter with Commander Feral. Acting without thinking, like his punching the Commander on top of Enforcer Headquarters.

Jake knew him good enough to prevent him from his missteps.

He was his thoughtful, gentle younger brother.

Chance closed his eyes and leaned his head against the seat's backrest.

Yesterday, the brother was suddenly gone, and a callous monster had taken his place. Razor's betrayal had felt like an execution.

And, however joyful the sudden realization of the truth had been, it had also come as a shock. Jake had never betrayed him. This was some other dimension's Jake, a kat with Jake's name, with his face and voice, but *not* Jake.

Chance felt sick. He had been blind all the time. Blinded by fear. Blinded by hatred. Blinded by pain. He might have been able to realize that Jake had reacted very peculiarly this morning and the day before, but, in addition, Turmoil's escape had fogged his mind. Because of this, the veil of unawareness had only lifted from his mind in his fight with the Flight Commander, and not before.

What all he had done and thought in the meantime…

He had falsely accused his true brother! On the Enforcer tarmac, confronted with the Enforcer pilots, with his own lost past, his anger had been focused on Jake, and on Jake alone! Feral's words about _"better going down"_ with the old plane _"instead of ejecting"_ should have make him wake up, but he had preferred it to let his anger sweep away his judgment, to believe in mistrust.

Not to mention the accusations he'd flung at Jake drugged with rage when he had stood face-to-face with the Flight Commander aboard Turmoil's ship…

Chance sighed. He had not told Jake everything. He had left out that Jake was a murderer in the other dimension, as well as the fact that his relationship to Turmoil was more than simply a business one.

Why had he left these details out? Was it to protect Jake from the shock it would give him? Or was it that he feared affairs might recur if Jake knew about his twin's love for Turmoil? This look-alike Jake had sincerely loved her; so would Jake…?

Chance covered his face with his hands. He rubbed his temples with his palms, trying to suppress the nascent accusing question. His right hand throbbed furiously. He looked at it and saw the blood-encrusted cut he'd gotten when he had climbed aboard Turmoil's ship again after his backpack had been empty of fuel. The wound had closed, but there would be a scar.

Unexpectedly, Chance realized that the other Chance wouldn't have this scar.

The *other* Chance.

_My doppelganger…_

_"An egocentric wanna-be-an-immortal-hero pilot,"_ Jake had called him. Perhaps he had been right with his characterization. Chance had not wanted Jake to _"drag his achievements down"_. Not *their* achievements, no, *his*!

In his eyes, Jake was really no more than an assistant, a hindrance to his flying abilities.

If he saw the other Jake in his friend, was there not also a part of the other Chance within himself?

What had happened in that other dimension that Jake had sought his love with Turmoil, a she-kat he had never gotten more than a glimpse at on their first run-in? Which fatal events had occurred that had turned a young, optimistic, gifted mind into a desperate and exhausted criminal? What had made him a murderer?

None of this should have happened! If one of them required help as desperately as Jake did, shouldn't the other have been there for support, as an escort on the stony path of vulnerability, like a true friend, a true brother did?

Jake could turn to him for guidance, for help if he needed it… Could that other Jake have had the same faith in his 'brother', in a kat that referred to him as _"the weakest link of the chain"_?

Chance groaned. _I never questioned my own part in the game, but there are always two sides of the story._

Jake couldn't have faith. The confidence in each other between him and the other Chance had evaporated. There was no telling what had caused this in the other dimension, or when it had started. Chance had not seen nearly enough to answer these questions. But, their downfall had started with the mutual passing away of trust.

Chance's throat was dry. He was alone, accompanied only by the pulsing of his blood in his ears; its constant beat burning in his injured nose and hand. For once, the silence of the hangar wasn't comforting.

He had gone through a lot these last days, gotten more than only surface wounds. Whenever he had gotten wounds before, Jake had been there to help him with the pain. They shared fates; they'd always been there for each other. It had taken merely one day without this support, and events that would otherwise have bounced off his hide without leaving a single scratch had maimed him.

_Like it must have been with the other Jake and Chance…_

He inspected his palm again. There was a scar the other Chance didn't have. A scar telling him that their fate could be different from their twins'. It was up to them to influence their destiny to the better…

Chance stood up and clenched his fist. He would bear the scar in his mind. He would never forget what he'd been going through; he'd always recall that he had taken the pain of a different Chance. He would remember his scar as a token of self-made fate!

It would save him from his uttermost fear, from his nemesis: The enemy he could be himself. The same kat on the outside, but no longer Chance Furlong within.

Staggering with tiredness, Chance headed for the ladder, seeking his way upstairs.

Jake needed his being there.

* * *

  


THE END


End file.
